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A <strong>HISTORY</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>INNER</strong> <strong>ASIA</strong><br />
Geographically and historically Inner Asia is a confusing area<br />
which is much in need of interpretation.Svat Soucek’s book offers<br />
a short and accessible introduction to the history of the region.The<br />
narrative, which begins with the arrival of Islam, proceeds chronologically,<br />
charting the rise and fall of the changing dynasties, the<br />
Russian conquest of Central Asia and the fall of the Soviet Union.<br />
Dynastic tables and maps augment and elucidate the text.The contemporary<br />
focus rests on the seven countries which make up the<br />
core of present-day Eurasia, that is Uzbekistan, Kazakstan,<br />
Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Sinkiang, and Mongolia.<br />
Since 1991, there has been renewed interest in these countries<br />
which has prompted considerable political, cultural, economic, and<br />
religious debate.While a vast and divergent literature has evolved<br />
in consequence, no short survey of the region has been attempted.<br />
Soucek’s history of Inner Asia promises to fill this gap and to<br />
become an indispensable source of information for anyone studying<br />
or visiting the area.<br />
svat soucek is a bibliographer at Princeton University Library.<br />
He has worked as Central Asia bibliographer at Columbia<br />
University, New York Public Library, and at the University of<br />
Michigan, and has published numerous related articles in The<br />
Journal of Turkish Studies, The Encyclopedia of Islam, and The Dictionary<br />
of the Middle Ages.
A <strong>HISTORY</strong> <strong>OF</strong> <strong>INNER</strong> <strong>ASIA</strong><br />
svat soucek<br />
Princeton University
cambridge university press<br />
Cambridge, New York, Melbourne, Madrid, Cape Town, Singapore, São Paulo<br />
Cambridge University Press<br />
The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge cb2 2ru, United Kingdom<br />
Published in the United States by Cambridge University Press, New York<br />
www.cambridge.org<br />
Information on this title: www.cambridge.org/9780521651691<br />
© Cambridge University Press 2000<br />
This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provision of<br />
relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place<br />
without the written permission of Cambridge University Press.<br />
First published in print format 2000<br />
ISBN-13 978-0-511-06851-5 eBook (EBL)<br />
ISBN-10 0-511-06851-4 eBook (EBL)<br />
ISBN-13 978-0-521-65169-1 hardback<br />
ISBN-10 0-521-65169-7 hardback<br />
ISBN-13 978-0-521-65704-4 paperback<br />
ISBN-10 0-521-65704-0 paperback<br />
Cambridge University Press has no responsibility for the persistence or accuracy of<br />
urls for external or third-party internet websites referred to in this book, and does not<br />
guarantee that any content on such websites is, or will remain, accurate or appropriate.
Contents<br />
List of maps pagevii<br />
Preface ix<br />
Introduction 1<br />
1 The beginnings 46<br />
2 The Kök Turks, the Chinese expansion, and the Arab<br />
conquest 51<br />
3 The Samanids 70<br />
4 The Uighur kingdom of Qocho 77<br />
5 The Qarakhanids 83<br />
6 Seljukids and Ghaznavids 93<br />
7 The conquering Mongols 103<br />
8 The Chaghatayids 117<br />
9 Timur and the Timurids 123<br />
10 The last Timurids and the first Uzbeks 144<br />
11 The Shaybanids 149<br />
12 The rise of Russia, the fall of the Golden Horde, and the<br />
resilient Chaghatayids 162<br />
13 The Buddhist Mongols 167<br />
14 Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand in the seventeenth to<br />
nineteenth centuries 177<br />
15 The Russian conquest and rule of Central Asia 195<br />
v
vi Contents<br />
16 From Governorates-General to Union Republics 209<br />
17 Soviet Central Asia 225<br />
18 Central Asia becomes independent 254<br />
19 Sinkiang as part of China 263<br />
20 Independent Central Asian Republics 275<br />
21 The Republic of Mongolia 297<br />
Summary and conclusion 303<br />
Appendix 1: Dynastic tables 316<br />
Appendix 2: Country data 330<br />
Select bibliography 341<br />
Index 360
Maps<br />
1 Inner Asia: principal political units page viii<br />
2 Kök Turkic Empire, ca.622 52<br />
3 Mongol Empire, ca.1294 102<br />
4 Timurid Empire 124<br />
5 Central Asia, ca.1825 176<br />
6 Central Asia under Tsarist Russia 194<br />
7 Sinkiang (Chinese Turkestan) 264<br />
8 Kazakhstan 276<br />
9 Kyrgyzstan 277<br />
10 Tajikistan 278<br />
11 Turkmenistan 279<br />
12 Uzbekistan 280<br />
13 Mongolia 296<br />
vii
Moscow<br />
RUSSIAN FEDERATIVE REPUBLIC<br />
Kazan<br />
Yakut A.R.<br />
Yakutsk<br />
Tatar A.R.<br />
Bashkir A.R.<br />
Ufa<br />
Elista<br />
Kalmyk<br />
A.R.<br />
RUSSIA<br />
Siberia<br />
CHINA<br />
Buriat<br />
A.R.<br />
Lake<br />
Baikal<br />
Ulan-Ude<br />
Gorno-Altai<br />
Region<br />
Gorno-Altaisk<br />
Kyzyl<br />
Tuva A.R.<br />
Caspian<br />
Sea<br />
Astana<br />
Aral<br />
Sea<br />
KAZAKHSTAN<br />
Ulaanbaatar<br />
MONGOLIA<br />
UZBEKISTAN<br />
<strong>INNER</strong> MONGOLIAN A.R.<br />
Ashgabat<br />
TURKMENISTAN<br />
(CHINA)<br />
IRAN<br />
Beijing<br />
Tashkent Bishkek<br />
Urumchi<br />
KYRGYZSTAN<br />
Dushanbe<br />
SINKIANG<br />
(CHINA)<br />
TAJIKISTAN<br />
AFGHANISTAN<br />
Inner Asia:<br />
principal political units<br />
CHINA<br />
TIBET<br />
KASHMIR<br />
PAKISTAN<br />
Map 1 Inner Asia: principal political units
Preface<br />
This book is an attempt to offer the reader a historical and topical introduction<br />
to several countries in the core of Eurasia which until recently<br />
were little noticed except by a small community of scholars or people<br />
who had special reasons to do so.One result of this neglect has been a<br />
lack of adequate literature of the kind presented here: a general survey<br />
of the past and present of this part of the world.<br />
Almost overnight, a few years ago, these countries – Uzbekistan,<br />
Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, Sinkiang, and<br />
Mongolia – began to attract considerable attention from politicians,<br />
journalists, businessmen, and academicians.The reason was the collapse<br />
of the Soviet Union in 1991.Since the formation of that Union in the<br />
early 1920s, the first five of the group had been almost sequestered by<br />
the rulers of the Soviet empire.The outside world was barred from<br />
unhindered access and communication with them, and their own citizens<br />
found contact with that world both difficult and risky.Mongolia was<br />
officially independent, but its membership in the family of Soviet satellites<br />
had imposed on it similar strictures.For the same reason, the Soviet<br />
Union’s demise affected it almost as profoundly as it did the five Union<br />
republics.We are also including Sinkiang, although the course of its<br />
recent history has followed a somewhat different path.The inclusion is<br />
justified, we think, because the province is geographically as well as historically<br />
an integral part of the group, and because the evolution occurring<br />
among its members is likely to affect Sinkiang as well.<br />
The historic change rather unwittingly set in motion by Mikhail<br />
Gorbachev but then gaining its own momentum has thus generated a<br />
sudden surge of interest in these countries, an interest that spans the<br />
broad spectrum of political, cultural, economic, and even religious<br />
spheres, and that emanates from countries as divergent as the United<br />
States, China, Turkey, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.This in turn has<br />
begun to produce a rapidly growing volume of literature, ranging from<br />
ix
x Preface<br />
newspaper reports to financial analyses, statistical yearbooks, specialized<br />
periodicals, and learned articles and monographs.Paradoxically but<br />
perhaps understandably, however, a comprehensive survey of the kind<br />
attempted here has so far not been published.Our book is meant to fill<br />
this gap.<br />
The principal focus of this study, we have said, is on seven countries:<br />
the republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and<br />
Uzbekistan; the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region of the People’s<br />
Republic of China; and the Republic of Mongolia.The first five units<br />
have also been known collectively as Western or Russian Turkestan, or,<br />
more recently, as Soviet Central Asia; the sixth unit, as Eastern or<br />
Chinese Turkestan, or High Tartary; and the seventh, as Outer<br />
Mongolia.<br />
It is not customary to discuss the three groups together when they are<br />
approached as specific political units, or when the historical narrative<br />
includes the modern period after the formation of these units.The<br />
reasons for this reside more in the different academic, journalistic, or<br />
political backgrounds of the observers than in any intrinsic justification<br />
for such a separation.Our treatment of the subject will demonstrate, we<br />
hope, that the bonds unifying Western and Eastern Turkestan are<br />
stronger than the differences between them, and that without Mongolia<br />
the historical picture would be incomplete.<br />
inner asia: principal political units<br />
The “centrality” of Inner Asia as the landlocked core of the Eurasian<br />
continent is graphically brought out by the brackets which Moscow and<br />
Beijing form to encompass the seven countries under discussion.<br />
The seven countries are Kazakhstan (capital: Astana), Kyrgyzstan<br />
(capital, Bishkek), Tajikistan (capital: Dushanbe), Turkmenistan (capital:<br />
Ashkhabad), Uzbekistan (capital: Tashkent), Sinkiang (capital:<br />
Urumchi), and Mongolia (capital: Ulan Bator).<br />
Area: Kazakhstan, 2,717,300 sq.km.(1,048,000 sq.miles); Kyrgyzstan,<br />
198,500 sq.km.(76,641 sq.miles); Tajikistan, 143,100 sq.km.(55,251<br />
sq.miles); Turkmenistan, 488,100 sq.km.(188,455 sq.miles);<br />
Uzbekistan, 447,400 sq.km.(173,591 sq.miles); Sinkiang, 1,646,000 sq.<br />
km.(635,829 sq.miles); and Mongolia, 1,565,000 sq.km.(604,247 sq.<br />
miles).Their order in terms of size is thus Kazkhstan, Sinkiang,<br />
Mongolia, Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan.
Preface xi<br />
Population: (approximate figures, due to the evolving situation; based on<br />
data from 1981–94): Kazakhstan, 17,200,000; Kyrgyzstan, 4,600,000;<br />
Tajikistan, 5,700,000; Turkmenistan, 4,000,000; Uzbekistan,<br />
21,900,000; Sinkiang, 15,200,000; Mongolia, 2,400,000.Their order<br />
according to the size of the population is thus Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan,<br />
Sinkiang, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, Mongolia.In ethnolinguistic<br />
terms, the principal nationalities of these countries are Turkic<br />
(Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, Sinkiang, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan),<br />
Iranian (Tajikistan), and Mongol (Mongolia).<br />
In addition to the seven principal countries, Map 1 also shows eight<br />
other units based on ethnolinguistic and historical principles that relate<br />
them to our theme.Seven of these are in the Russian Federation, the<br />
eighth is in China.Those in the Russian Federation are the autonomous<br />
republics of Tatarstan (capital: Kazan), Bashkiria or Bashqurtistan<br />
(capital: Ufa), Kalmykia (capital: Elista), the autonomous region of<br />
Gorno-Altai (capital: Gorno-Altaisk), and the autonomous republics of<br />
Tuva (capital: Kyzyl), Buriatia (capital: Ulan-Ude), and Yakutia (capital:<br />
Yakutsk).The one in China is the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region<br />
(capital: Hohhot).The determinant nationalities of five of these units<br />
speak Turkic languages (Tatarstan, Bashqurtistan, Gorno-Altai, Tuva,<br />
and Yakutia), and of three, Mongol languages (Kalmykia, Buriatia,<br />
Inner Mongolia).<br />
Moreover, a strict focus on the seven distinct units makes sense only<br />
for the present and recent situation.For times farther back, we shall treat<br />
the subject as a history of Inner Asia, whose core will still be the aforementioned<br />
countries but whose area will retain a certain flexibility, with<br />
the centers of gravity shifting or dividing or multiplying according to the<br />
flow of events; and we shall thus frequently pay attention to places well<br />
beyond the seven units’ modern political boundaries.<br />
Finally, yet another qualification is necessary.The past as we have conceived<br />
of it for the purposes of this book starts in the seventh century<br />
with the arrival of Islam in Central Asia.There are two reasons for this<br />
decision.One is the academic background of the author, the other the<br />
fact that for Central Asia, earlier periods are the domain of the archaeologist<br />
rather than of the historian.<br />
In addition to “Central Asia,” we also use the term “Inner Asia.” Inner<br />
Asia, somewhat of a neologism and limited to scholarly parlance, designates<br />
the whole area in its historical and geographical sense; Central Asia,<br />
as used in English, means the western portion of Inner Asia, roughly
xii Preface<br />
Western Turkestan and the western part of Eastern Turkestan, together<br />
with such adjacent areas as northeastern Iran and northern<br />
Afghanistan.For the present political configuration we shall use the<br />
names of the six republics (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan,<br />
Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Mongolia), while Sinkiang will stand for<br />
its unwieldly and long official name, Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous<br />
Region of the People’s Republic of China.<br />
transliteration and geopolitical terminology<br />
This book deals with an area and history where several language families<br />
and alphabets have existed, often coexisting or replacing one another<br />
or going through natural or imposed transformations.Transliteration of<br />
the multitude of names and terms is a daunting and expensive (if a profusion<br />
of diacritical marks is used) challenge, and perfection is impossible.Even<br />
when writing for the reduced audience of scholars, an author<br />
must explain the compromise he has chosen and apologize for the<br />
shortcomings.<br />
We have followed, with some modifications, the transliteration<br />
system used by the Encyclopaedia of Islam. The main exception is dispensation<br />
with diacritical signs and special letters.In a book of this<br />
kind an array of such features would be pointless or even disruptive.<br />
The general reader, we think, would find no use for scrupulously<br />
marked Arabic or Turkic words, while the specialist, if he chooses to<br />
read the book, will not need such additional help.We have thus limited<br />
the use of diacritics to their occurrences in the languages using the<br />
roman alphabet – in our book chiefly French, German, and Turkish.<br />
For Chinese, we follow the Wade-Giles system, except for names that<br />
have become familiar in their pinyin form (the official transliteration<br />
now used in China).<br />
A different type of compromise has also been imposed by practical<br />
considerations.While we have endeavored to avoid anachronisms when<br />
referring to specific regions, complete consistency has not been<br />
attempted.Sinkiang received this name only in 1758, yet we freely avail<br />
ourselves of this name even when discusssing earlier periods, simply<br />
because using (or creating) other names would cause needless confusion.<br />
Similarly, Mongolia was from the sixth to the ninth centuries the core of<br />
Inner Asian Turkic empires.Should we call it, when discussing that<br />
period, Turkestan (or Turkey, for that matter)? Or again southern Russia<br />
and Ukraine were in antiquity the home of the Iranian Scythians, and
Preface xiii<br />
in the early Middle Ages of Kipchak Turks.Referring to them as Scythia<br />
or Kipchakia would sound rather pedantic in our book.<br />
The author wishes to express warmest thanks to Michael Cook and<br />
Mark Farrell, both of Princeton University, for reading the manuscript<br />
and suggesting many corrections and improvements.
Introduction<br />
natural setting<br />
Inner Asia is marked by three distinct features: (1) a belt of steppes and,<br />
to a lesser degree, deserts, which extend in a general latitudinal direction.This<br />
belt is delimited on the north by the Eurasian forest zone (the<br />
“taiga” of Siberia); on the south the limits are a variety of features,<br />
chiefly mountain chains but also transition to different climatic zones<br />
(notably in China) and bodies of water such as the Caspian and Black<br />
Seas; (2) several of these mostly latitudinal mountain chains that separate<br />
the steppe belt from South Asia, besides demarcating important segments<br />
within the area; and (3) a number of rivers, many of which drain<br />
into interior lakes or seas or disappear in the deserts through evaporation.All<br />
these features have affected the type and history of human presence,<br />
but some have in turn been modified by man’s intervention, since<br />
the dawn of sedentary civilization but especially in recent decades.<br />
The steppe belt, an immense swath of landlocked grassland, made<br />
possible the appearance of a unique historical phenomenon: the horsebreeding,<br />
highly mobile Eurasian nomad.To be sure, nomads have also<br />
existed in other parts of the world, but the scale of the habitat, the role<br />
of the horse, and the relative and paradoxical proximity of great agricultural<br />
or urban civilizations made it possible for the Inner Asian<br />
nomad to play a historical role as unique and often as grandiose as was<br />
his homeland.In historical times, these nomads have been Turks and<br />
Mongols: these peoples had earlier seized primacy from the Indo-<br />
Europeans, some of whom they absorbed and some of whom migrated<br />
to India, the Middle East, or Europe.<br />
Despite or perhaps partly because of their vastness, the Eurasian<br />
steppes and deserts have not been known by any comprehensive name.<br />
Those portions which have received generally accepted and well-known<br />
appellations owe them to historical circumstances or to special geographical<br />
features.Leading this roster are the Orkhon valley in Central<br />
1
2 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Mongolia, the Jungarian plain in northern Sinkiang, the Ili valley and<br />
Semireche in northwestern Sinkiang and southeastern Kazakhstan, and<br />
various deserts – the Gobi of southern Mongolia and eastern Sinkiang,<br />
Taklamakan in western Sinkiang, Betpak Dala (“Plain of Misfortune”)<br />
in southern Kazakhstan, Kyzyl Kum (“Red Sand”) in Uzbekistan, and<br />
Kara Kum (“Black Sand”) in Turkmenistan.The great expanse of the<br />
steppe of Kazakhstan, southern Russia and southern Ukraine, known to<br />
medieval Muslim authors as Dasht-i Kipchak (“The Steppe of the<br />
Kipchak [Turks]”), has since the political and demographic transformations<br />
of recent centuries become nameless, or has come to be known by<br />
the names of new administrative apportionments.<br />
In contrast, the mountains and rivers of Inner Asia more easily catch<br />
our eye and retain evocative names: the Altai, Tianshan, and Pamirs are<br />
the most prominent ranges from among a number of lesser but still<br />
impressive systems; their location makes them central to our story, but<br />
the Kunlun, Karakoram, and Himalayas of Tibet, and the Urals of<br />
northern Eurasia also deserve mention.The Kunlun, Karakoram, and<br />
Himalayas, the highest mountain complexes in the world, allowed trade<br />
and religion to circulate through their passes between India and Inner<br />
Asia, but they impeded the southward expansion of the nomads’ steppe<br />
empires.The Urals attract our attention with the contrast they offer to<br />
the centrally located latitudinal Tianshan, for example: this extended<br />
longitudinal chain divides the Eurasian continent’s forest zone into its<br />
European and Asian parts, or, expressed in political terms, into<br />
European and Siberian Russia.Its southern outcroppings protrude into<br />
the northernmost part of the Kipchak Steppe, dividing it too into two<br />
approximate halves, a task then taken over by the Ural river, which rises<br />
in the Urals and eventually flows into the Caspian Sea.<br />
Both rivers and mountains affected the nomads’ lives.Mountains<br />
played a role whose importance was second only to that of the steppes.<br />
First of all, the positive role: such ranges as the Tianshan encouraged<br />
through the pastures on their northern slopes and in their valleys a seasonal,<br />
vertical migration of the transhumant type that is a counterpart<br />
to the equally seasonal but horizontal (often south–north) migration in<br />
the steppes.Thus the Kyrgyz became almost exclusively mountain<br />
nomads, in contrast to their closest kinsmen the Kazakhs who were<br />
steppe nomads, or to the Mongols.The mountains also often functioned<br />
as places of refuge and starting points for the nomads’ political regrouping:<br />
the Altai, Hangai, and Hentei ranges of Mongolia have all played<br />
such roles in the history of the Turks and Mongols.Certain peaks even
Introduction 3<br />
acquired a magic aura where rituals and burials were performed or<br />
where a leader would go into seclusion in order to communicate with<br />
tengri, the nomads’ celestial deity, at such crucial moments as the eve of<br />
an important battle.To this should be added the likelihood that such<br />
mineral-rich ranges as the Altai facilitated the early Turks’ metallurgy<br />
and weapon production.As for their negative role: mountains, we have<br />
suggested, could not but act as barriers to vaster movements of nomads<br />
in search of new habitats or empires to build; indeed, when they built<br />
empires, the latter were steppe empires, to use a term made classic by<br />
René Grousset.<br />
If nomads occupied the most characteristic place of human presence<br />
in Inner Asia, they were by no means its only inhabitants, and agriculture<br />
as well as urban life have flourished in many parts of it.Settlements<br />
usually owed their existence to mountains, but indirectly: agriculture<br />
was mostly of the irrigated and oasis type, dependent on rivers or underground<br />
conduits whose sources feed from the rainfall and glaciers of<br />
Inner Asian mountains.Dry farming depending on rainfall was not<br />
absent, but it in turn occurred chiefly in the higher elevations and foothills<br />
of the mountains or, more recently, in the northern latitudes of the<br />
steppe belt.<br />
The part of Inner Asia where settled agricultural and urban civilization<br />
had appeared in protohistory and soon reached an especially developed<br />
and intensive level lay between the Caspian and Aral Seas on the<br />
west and the Tianshan and Pamir mountains on the east.This is the core<br />
of Central Asia, an area of plains and rivers, with no daunting mountain<br />
ranges until faced by the historic range of Hindukush; and it lies at<br />
the crossroads between the steppe world of Inner Asia to the north and<br />
the different regions of the Middle East and India to the south.The two<br />
worlds, the steppes of Inner Asia of the north and the subtropical<br />
regions of the south, were too distant to be encompassed by either the<br />
steppe empires of Inner Asia or the great monarchies of Iran or India.<br />
However, human migration through Central Asia was feasible, and the<br />
area became an important gateway through which in protohistory and<br />
antiquity peoples of Inner Asia moved south to Iran or India.<br />
historico-geographical survey<br />
In the course of our narrative, names of regions, cities, and natural phenomena<br />
will appear that may be unfamiliar to the reader.Good maps<br />
or atlases – such as The Times Atlas of the World, The Times Atlas of China,
4 A history of Inner Asia<br />
An Historical Atlas of Islam edited by W.C.Brice and published under the<br />
patronage of the Encyclopaedia of Islam, The Historical and Commercial<br />
Atlas of China by K.Herrmann, and The Times Atlas of World History – can<br />
help, as should, we hope, the accompanying maps throughout this book.<br />
A preliminary survey may also be worthwhile.<br />
Let us start with the historical core of Central Asia, a region called<br />
Transoxania (or Transoxiana).The scholars who coined this name did<br />
so because the area lies beyond the River Oxus as one approaches it from<br />
the classical world of Iran, more specifically from its northeastern province<br />
of Khurasan.The Oxus, a Latinized form of an ancient Iranian<br />
word, was known to the Arabs as Jayhun, and is now called Amu Darya<br />
(“the Amu river”; this too may be an originally Iranian name, based on<br />
a local variant, Amu, and the Persian word for lake or sea, darya, borrowed<br />
by Central Asian Turkic with the connotation of river).The name<br />
indicates where Transoxania begins on the south, but does not say where<br />
it ends on the north, west, or east.There we have to use history’s indirect<br />
evidence and its possible interpretations, while admitting that this<br />
matter is less relevant than the question of why Transoxania was important,<br />
and where its center of gravity lay.The latter can be sought along<br />
another river, the Zarafshan (“gold-strewing” in Persian), which like the<br />
Amu Darya originates farther east in the Pamir mountains; it then flows<br />
west, first in its valley between the protrusions of the Pamirs called here<br />
Turkestan and Zarafshan ranges, then through the central lowland of<br />
Uzbekistan, and ultimately makes a lunge for the Amu Darya but disappears,<br />
exhausted, in the sands of Uzbekistan’s Kyzyl Kum desert.<br />
Irrigation derived from the Zarafshan has since antiquity supported<br />
dense agricultural and urban settlements, and cities like Panjikent in<br />
Tajikistan, or Samarkand and Bukhara in Uzbekistan are only the best<br />
remembered or most famous examples.Moreover, the Zarafshan is only<br />
the principal among the streams in Transoxania and adjacent areas that<br />
have made irrigation possible and through it settled and urban life.One<br />
of these, the Kashka Darya, rises in the southern watershed of the<br />
Zarafshan range.It then flows southwest and westward, in a manner<br />
somewhat parallel to that of the Zarafshan, toward the Bukharan oasis,<br />
but disappears before reaching it.Among the settlements it has nourished<br />
are such historical places as Shahrisabz, earlier known as Kesh and<br />
remembered as the birthplace of Timur (Tamerlane), and Karshi, the<br />
former Nasaf which was renamed in the Mongol period after the palace<br />
(karshi) built there by one of the Mongol rulers.The Zarafshan range is<br />
paralleled on the south by the Hisar range (often written Hissar or
Introduction 5<br />
Gissar, for no good reason except that this echoes Russian spelling), the<br />
last of these chains as we proceed southward.From then on we descend<br />
toward the valley of the Amu Darya.If we cross this river and continue,<br />
we eventually approach the mighty Hindukush mountains of<br />
Afghanistan.These two ranges, the Hisar on the north and Hindukush<br />
on the south, bracket the core territory of historical Bactria, the later<br />
Tokharistan; today this territory corresponds to northern Afghanistan,<br />
southern Tajikistan and southeastern Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan.<br />
The delimitation of Bactria on the east and west is less clear-cut, but one<br />
feature deserves mention: the “Iron Gate,” a defile about half-way<br />
between Balkh and Samarkand that breaks the low mountain range<br />
extending from the Hisar range southward toward the Amu Darya.The<br />
Iron Gate was a historic passageway between Bactria and Sogdia, used<br />
by conquerors, ambassadors, pilgrims and merchant caravans, and its<br />
name was more than just a legend: an actual gate reinforced with iron<br />
used to exist there.<br />
The people who inhabited the area along the Zarafshan river as well<br />
as adjacent regions at the time of the Arab conquest were the Sogdians,<br />
hence the historical name for this central part of Transoxania, Sogdia<br />
or Sogdiana.They spoke an Iranian tongue, for Sogdia, like much of<br />
Central Asia, was then an Iranian-speaking area.One trace of that is<br />
toponymy, which includes many towns whose names end in -kent, -kand,<br />
-kat or other variants of this Iranian word meaning “town”: Panjikent,<br />
Uzgend, Samarkand, Numijkat (the original name of Bukhara),<br />
Tashkent, Yarkand, or simply Kat for example.Another vestige is the<br />
fact that a sizable component of the population is still Iranian-speaking<br />
or bilingual Iranian–Turkic (although some time after the Islamic conquest<br />
a shift occurred from Sogdian to Farsi, the language of Fars, a<br />
province in southern Persia, which developed into modern Persian).<br />
Muslim geographers of the tenth century (remarkable for the<br />
florescence of Islamic geography written in Arabic) called the country<br />
Bilad al-Sughd, Land of the Sogdians, and the Zarafshan, Wadi al-<br />
Sughd, Sogd river.<br />
Historical Sogdia was thus the core of Transoxania, as it is today of<br />
modern Uzbekistan.For Transoxania the Arabs used the term<br />
Mawarannahr, “That which is beyond the river [Jayhun],” thus following<br />
the same psycholinguistic process.By contrast, the name Uzbekistan,<br />
“country of the Uzbeks,” came into official usage only in 1924 with the<br />
creation of the republic of that name.The second part of this compound,<br />
the Indo-European -stan (place of abode, sojourn, camp, tent;
6 A history of Inner Asia<br />
cognate of the English verb to stand), met with prodigious fortunes in<br />
the entire Orient that was either Iranian or Iranian-inspired, whether<br />
Turco-Mongol or Indian: the ubiquitous suffix appeared in the Arabs’<br />
Turkistan and in a myriad other names of regions from Kazakhstan to<br />
Hindustan and Pakistan, besides existing independently as the term for<br />
each of the provinces of modern Iran, ustan (and even as a suffix forming<br />
associative rather than geographical concepts: thus Gulistan, “Place of<br />
Roses” and Bustan, “Place of Fragrance,” titles of two famous collections<br />
of poems composed by the fourteenth-century Persian poet Sadi).<br />
Khurasan, Mawarannahr, and Tokharistan were thus the standard<br />
terms for Central Asia to the south and north of the Jayhun river (Oxus,<br />
Amu Darya) in early Islamic civilization as formulated through its principal<br />
medium, the Arabic language.Once the Iranian element of the<br />
Islamic empire reasserted its identity, however, two other terms appeared<br />
that harkened back to the times of rivalry between the sedentary inhabitants<br />
of pre-Islamic Persia and the nomadic ones of Inner Asia: Iran<br />
and Turan.These concepts were more symbolic and political than<br />
expressions of ethnic difference, for the population on both sides of the<br />
Oxus was at that time Iranian; to the north of this river, however, suzerainty<br />
belonged ever more to the nomadic Turks of the steppe, so that<br />
pre-Islamic Persians thought of it as Turan, a place or abode (an) of the<br />
Turks (Tur; this interpretation, however, is very dubious), in contrast to<br />
Iran.This usage remained limited to classical Persian poetry, but the<br />
awareness of the Oxus as the great demarcation line between two<br />
different worlds – that of the Middle East, and that of Inner Asia –<br />
remained pervasive throughout the Middle Ages.<br />
To the northwest of Transoxania lay Khwarazm (also spelled<br />
Khwarizm, Khawarazm, Kharazm, Khorazm and Latinized as<br />
Chorasmia), a region which, like the former, can be better defined by its<br />
core than by its limits, besides the fact that its northeastern portion was<br />
technically also Transoxania.The core is the lowermost course of the<br />
Amu Darya and its sprawling delta estuary fringing the southern shore<br />
of the Aral Sea.Here too it was the river, this time the Amu itself, that<br />
made possible a flourishing agricultural and urban civilization which<br />
was, since protohistory, Iranian.In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times<br />
two kingdoms tended to divide up Khwarazm: one in the southeast, with<br />
the city of Kat by the right, northern bank of the Amu Darya, as its<br />
capital; the other in the northwest, with the city of Urgench as the ruler’s<br />
residence.Both are archaeological sites today, with the qualification that<br />
another town called Urgench arose in the seventeenth century farther
Introduction 7<br />
upstream, while the original site came to be known as Kunya Urgench,<br />
“Old Urgench” (from the Persian kuhna, “old”).Even the name<br />
Khwarazm has disappeared from current usage except in the rather<br />
artificial administrative parlance introduced after the upheavals of the<br />
Russian Revolution and establishment of the Soviet regime (the shortlived<br />
“Republic of Khorazmia,” and then the Khorazmian Region of<br />
the Uzbek SSR and now of Uzbekistan; the Region, whose administrative<br />
center is the aforementioned “new” Urgench, is only a fraction of<br />
historical Khwarazm, whose greater part corresponds to the present<br />
Karakalpak Autonomous Republic and the Dashhovuz Region of<br />
Turkmenistan).Other cities, names, and formations have developed in<br />
Khwarazm through the centuries; from among these Khiva, on the<br />
southern side of the delta’s apex, rose to prominence in the seventeenth<br />
century, and gave its name to a khanate that survived until 1919.A peculiar<br />
feature of the Amu Darya is the fact that all of its water did not<br />
always flow into the Aral Sea.At certain periods one branch swerved,<br />
shortly after having reached the apex of the delta, northwest and then<br />
southwest, passing by medieval Urgench.Called Uzboy, this branch<br />
then pursued the southwesterly course all the way to the Caspian Sea,<br />
which it entered through a wide coastal plain south of Krasnovodsk<br />
(Turkmenbashy).Before entering this plain, this arm of the Amu Darya<br />
flowed through a valley between two low mountain ranges, Greater<br />
Balkhan on the northwest and Lesser Balkhan on the southeast; a noteworthy<br />
feature of the foothills of the Greater Balkhan is the town of<br />
Nebit Dag with the now famous deposits of natural gas in its vicinity.In<br />
1576 the river swerved back toward the Aral Sea, and the definitive<br />
decline of Old Urgench, thus deprived of its water supply, is by some<br />
historians attributed more to this natural cause than to devastations<br />
wrought by the armies of Genghis Khan and Timur.<br />
The damages done to irrigation by warfare, especially at the time of<br />
the Mongol invasion, are painful episodes in Central Asia’s past.An<br />
incalculably more terrible devastation – destruction of the environment<br />
and people’s health – was visited on the region in the heyday of Russian<br />
rule, and grew in intensity right down to the collapse of the Soviet<br />
empire.This devastation was brought about by irrigation undertaken by<br />
the Russian masters to suit the imperial metropolis at the expense of<br />
Central Asia.We shall return to this theme in the final chapters of our<br />
book.Here the case of the Amu Darya changing its course and thus<br />
causing the definitive demise of Old Urgench is an opportunity for<br />
mentioning a paradox characteristic of the Soviet period: the catas-
8 A history of Inner Asia<br />
trophic destruction of Central Asia’s environment caused by excessive<br />
irrigation.Irrigation, we have seen, was not a novelty here; in antiquity<br />
and the Middle Ages it enabled man to turn this part of the world into<br />
a flourishing region of gardens, orchards, fields growing varieties of<br />
cereals, and of prosperous towns.The Soviet government, however,<br />
turned this earthly paradise into a monster megafarm by ordering it to<br />
deliver cotton for Russia’s textile industry, and in addition to turning<br />
grainfields and orchards into water-thirsty cottonfields it undertook the<br />
construction of supercanals to irrigate vast tracts of steppe or even<br />
desert land in order to produce still more of that raw material.One such<br />
project was the 1,266 kilometer long Karakum canal, which traverses<br />
almost the whole length of Turkmenistan.It starts in the republic’s east<br />
by tapping the Amu Darya a few kilometers after this river has left<br />
Afghan territory, and proceeds all the way to the town of Kazanjik not<br />
far from the Caspian Sea.The Karakum canal, proudly boasting the<br />
epithet “Imeni V.I.Lenina” (“In the name of V.I.Lenin,” a favorite<br />
Soviet mark of distinction), was inaugurated in 1959, but its construction,<br />
begun before the war, still went on in the 1970s beyond Kazanjik.<br />
The Amu Darya is the lifeblood of man, beast, and plant that live and<br />
grow downstream, and it used to be the chief provider of water that<br />
kept the Aral Sea alive.The Karakum canal became a leech sucking this<br />
lifeblood from the beneficial river.The canal is of course only the most<br />
dramatic example of the violence perpetrated against man and nature<br />
in Soviet Central Asia; the Amu Darya – like its sister river the Syr<br />
Darya and other streams – was being tapped in many other parts of its<br />
course, and for the same principal purpose: ever more cotton for<br />
Russia’s textile industry.The dwindling – we might almost say<br />
desertification – of the Aral Sea, and the catastrophic consequences of<br />
excessive irrigation, seem to have escaped the notice of most observers,<br />
Soviet and foreign alike, before glasnost.Since the late 1980s, by contrast,<br />
a flood of articles and books on this crisis has drawn the attention of<br />
both the domestic and international audience, and generated a search<br />
for a solution which, the Central Asians hope, will be facilitated through<br />
massive international technical and financial aid.One aspect seldom<br />
given attention by either expert or journalistic observers is the destruction<br />
of a once-flourishing wildlife.The Amu Darya delta as well as other<br />
riparian regions of Central Asia used to shelter such animals as tigers,<br />
besides their principal prey, Bukhara deer and wild boar, and a multitude<br />
of waterfowl, while the Aral Sea teemed with fish supporting a<br />
lively fishing industry.All that is gone, the Aral has since 1965 dwindled
Introduction 9<br />
by more than a half, and some predict its complete disappearance<br />
by 2005.<br />
Medieval Khwarazm also functioned as an important commercial<br />
link between the Middle East and Russia, for it was through it that the<br />
most important trade routes between these two worlds passed.The trade<br />
was further stimulated by the Islamization of the Middle East, and the<br />
rise of Urgench as the chief Khwarazmian city from the tenth century<br />
onwards was partly due to this conjuncture.The caravans struck out<br />
across the broad plateau between the Aral and Caspian Seas known as<br />
Üst-yurt (“elevated ground” in Turkic), and headed toward the Volga<br />
river.Some of the traffic may also have headed for the broad<br />
Mangyshlak peninsula on the Caspian coast, where they boarded ships<br />
for the presumably less arduous maritime voyage toward the Volga.At<br />
the time of the Islamic conquests in the seventh–eighth centuries, the<br />
lower region of the Volga was the home of the Turkic qaghanate of<br />
the Khazars, with Itil situated in the river’s delta as its principal city.By<br />
the tenth century the Khazar qaghanate was in definitive decline, and<br />
some of its commercial function was being assumed by another Turkic<br />
kingdom, that of the Bulghars on the middle course of the Volga with<br />
Bulghar, not far from modern Kazan, as their capital.Whereas the<br />
Khazar elite was partly judaicized, the Bulghars eventually converted to<br />
Islam.History has fortunately preserved a vivid testimony of the inception<br />
of this process.It is an account of a mission sent in 922 by the<br />
Abbasid caliph Muqtadir (908–29) to the “King of the Bulghars”<br />
written by one of the participants, the Baghdad scholar Ibn Fadlan.<br />
To the east of Transoxania lies Fergana (also spelled Ferghana,<br />
Fargana, and Farghana; for the sake of consistency, we shall always use the<br />
formFergana),alargeellipticalvalleyenclosedbytheTianshanandPamir<br />
mountains on the north, east, and south.The valley is crossed by a river<br />
called Naryn along its upper course in Kyrgyzstan and then, after it has<br />
crossed the Uzbek border and received the Kara Darya, Syr Darya.<br />
Fergana could also be included in Transoxania, since it lies to the north of<br />
the Amu Darya.Like Sogdia, Khwarazm, and several other regions of<br />
CentralAsia,Ferganaisalandof anancientagriculturalcivilizationnourishedbystreamsdescendingfromthesurroundingmountainswiththeSyr<br />
Darya and Kara Darya playing the leading role.Again, its name, still<br />
current in the sixteenth century, was for some time overshadowed by that<br />
of one of its cities when the Khanate of Khoqand (also spelled Kokand;<br />
Quqon in modern Uzbek) became the easternmost of the three kingdoms<br />
of Central Asia prior to the nineteenth-century Russian conquest, the
10 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Emirate of Bukhara and Khanate of Khiva being the other two.The<br />
greater part of Fergana lies today within Uzbekistan as the republic’s easternmost<br />
province, except for fringes shared by Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan;<br />
for example the historic cities of Uzgend and Osh are on the Kyrgyz side<br />
of the border, that of Khujand is on the Tajik side.<br />
To the south of Transoxania lay the aforemetioned province of<br />
Khurasan (“[Land of] the Rising Sun” or “Orient” in Iranian), a name<br />
which still exists today but is restricted to the original territory’s southwestern<br />
segment as Iran’s province of Khurasan (Ustan-i Khurasan,<br />
with Meshed as the capital).In pre-Islamic and early Islamic times the<br />
name covered a much larger area that also comprised central<br />
Turkmenistan and northwestern Afghanistan and included such cities as<br />
Nisa, Merv, Nishapur, and Herat.Ashgabad, the capital of modern<br />
Turkmenistan, lies not far from the site of the ancient Parthian capital<br />
Nisa (second–first centuries BC) in the foothills of Kopet Dagh, a range<br />
that runs along the Turkmen–Iranian border.It is the streams flowing<br />
into this northern, Turkmen part of historical Khurasan that have supported<br />
agriculture and urban life there; most originate in the Kopet<br />
Dagh range, but two rivers, the Tejen and the Murghab, have their<br />
sources farther southeast in Afghanistan’s Kuh-i Baba (the classical<br />
Paropamissus; it is sometimes identified with the Hindukush, or more<br />
correctly with its western segment), and Firuzkuh ranges.The Tejen,<br />
whose upper course is called Heri Rud (Herat river), for a short distance<br />
forms the border between Afghanistan and Iran, and then between Iran<br />
and Turkmenistan before it forges its way into the latter republic’s Kara<br />
Kum desert.It meets its death there, but only after its sprawling desert<br />
delta has nourished a fertile network of agricultural settlements around<br />
the city of Tejen.The same can be said of the Murghab some 150 kilometers<br />
to the east, where an even larger oasis complex was marked by the<br />
famous medieval city of Merv.The Murghab, a short distance after it<br />
has entered Turkmenistan, is reinforced by the Kushk, a river originating<br />
in Afghanistan’s Safed Koh range.The town of Kushka grew up<br />
near the border post in the period of Russian domination, and became<br />
memorable as the southernmost point of the Tsarist and Soviet empire<br />
and as the terminus of a railway branch extended there from Merv.The<br />
main line ran from the Caspian port of Krasnovodsk through Merv to<br />
Bukhara, Samarkand and Tashkent, where it linked up with lines connecting<br />
Central Asia with Russia and Siberia.The railroad’s position<br />
and function reflected both ancient and recent long-distance routes<br />
going through Merv.In the early Middle Ages Merv lay on one of the
Introduction 11<br />
Silk Road’s trunk routes linking Sinkiang through Samarkand with<br />
Nishapur and points farther west, as well as the routes going to Balkh<br />
and India, and those going to Khwarazm and Russia.This made the city<br />
one of the great emporia of Central Asia, a role enhanced by exports of<br />
its own products, such as textiles woven from local silk and from cotton<br />
grown in the fertile oasis.The latter benefited from a sophisticated dam<br />
built some distance upstream, later destroyed by the Mongols, and partly<br />
rebuilt not long before the nineteenth-century Russian conquest (Bandi<br />
Sultani, “The Royal Dam”).The rebuilding of the dam did not restore<br />
the city to its former importance, nor did the railroad built by the<br />
Russians; the latter did reaffirm, however, the location’s strategic importance<br />
as a station on the road to India: the railroad’s extension to Kushka<br />
had the purpose of a supply line in the event of a push into Afghanistan<br />
and the ensuing likelihood of a war with Britain.Merv itself is a historical<br />
name correctly applicable only to the ruins of the metropolis<br />
destroyed in 1221 by the Mongols; the modern name is Mary, a town<br />
that grew about 30 kilometers to the west of the archaeological site.<br />
To the east of Khurasan, in present-day northern Afghanistan, is the<br />
aforementioned region known in antiquity as Bactria and called by the<br />
Arabs and Persians Tokharistan.Bactra, its capital, became the Balkh of<br />
the early Islamic centuries, and flourished until it was destroyed by the<br />
Mongols in 1221.It eventually recovered, but since the end of the<br />
fifteenth century it has had to yield primacy to a funerary sanctuary<br />
called Mazar-i Sharif located a short distance to the southeast; this<br />
shrine competes, in popular Islam, with the Iraqi town of Najaf for the<br />
distinction of allegedly being the final resting place of Ali, the prophet<br />
Muhammad’s son-in-law and Shii Islam’s first imam.The originally<br />
Iranian Bactria came to be known as “land of the Tokharians,” in the<br />
early centuries of our era, as a result of this group’s migration into its<br />
territory.Unlike their kinsmen who settled in northeastern Sinkiang and<br />
asserted their ethnolinguistic individuality there (the Tokharian-speaking<br />
inhabitants of Turfan, Karashahr, and Kucha), the Tokharians of<br />
Bactria, memorable as the people who played a leading role in the creation<br />
of the famous Kushan empire, became Iranized without leaving any<br />
trace of their original identity.The Iranian population also remained<br />
unaffected by the rule of lateral branches of Western Turks that<br />
extended there shortly before the inception of Muslim conquests.On<br />
the other hand, in more recent centuries the originally Iranian<br />
Tokharistan became infiltrated by Turkic tribes, chiefly Turkmen and<br />
Uzbek, to such an extent that it is also called Afghan Turkestan.
12 A history of Inner Asia<br />
If we leave Tokharistan and cross the Amu Darya, we are back on the<br />
“other” side of the river, thus technically in Transoxania.The city of<br />
Tirmidh (also spelled Termez) is situated at the point where the Surkhan<br />
Darya flows into the Amu Darya, on the northern (Uzbek) side of the<br />
latter river.It was a historic crossing point on the trade and pilgrim<br />
routes between Balkh and Samarkand (such as the one passing through<br />
the aforementioned Iron Gate) or, to take a broader view, between the<br />
Indian subcontinent, Inner Asia, and Russia.Tajikistan lies a short distance<br />
to the east, and its territory here has historical as well as physical<br />
features similar to those of adjacent Uzbekistan and Afghanistan, with<br />
an ancient civilization based on irrigation from rivers originating in the<br />
Tianshan and Pamir complex to the north and east, and from rivers<br />
rising in the Hindukush, if we include the southern, Afghan tributaries<br />
of the Panj (the upper course of the Amu Darya).As we have already<br />
stated, this region was part of ancient Bactria and medieval Tokharistan.<br />
One of the rivers flowing into the Panj is the Vakhsh, which rises in<br />
southeastern Kyrgyzstan’s Alai mountains, a range located between the<br />
Tianshan and Pamir mountains near the Sinkiang border.It is called<br />
there Kyzylsu, “Red River” – a name which it also keeps in its Persian<br />
garb, Surkhab, in Tajikistan – until it is reinforced by several more<br />
streams to become the Vakhsh.The Panj originates in the eastern Pamirs<br />
near Sinkiang, and its coupling with the Vakhsh produces the Amu<br />
Darya.It is the Panj which forms the longest part of the border between<br />
Tajikistan and Afghanistan, a role then continued by the Amu Darya<br />
which separates Afghanistan from Tajikistan, Uzbekistan and<br />
Turkmenistan, before ultimately swerving northwest on its course<br />
through the latter republic toward the Aral Sea.<br />
Dushanbe (lit.“Monday” in Persian, presumably because of a market<br />
held there on Mondays in pre-modern times; called Stalinabad between<br />
1929 and 1961), the capital of Tajikistan, lies between the Vakhsh and<br />
the Tajik–Uzbek border on another river, the Kafarnihan.The population<br />
between the latter river and the Uzbek border includes a large<br />
Uzbek minority, whereas in the other direction all the way to the eastern<br />
Pamirs it is overwhelmingly Iranian, in contrast to the otherwise mostly<br />
Turkic Turkestan.This part of ancient Bactria and medieval<br />
Tokharistan, before receiving the official label Tajikistan from the Soviet<br />
government, was known by such regional names as Hisar, Chaghaniyan,<br />
Kubadhiyan, or Khuttalan, and, farther east, Badakhshan, which today<br />
occupies the whole eastern half of the republic.The Pamirs cover<br />
Tajik Badakhshan’s entire territory, and this terrain gave it a special
Introduction 13<br />
identity recognized, since the Soviet period, in administrative terms<br />
as the Gorno-Badakhshanskaya Avtonomnaya Oblast, “Mountain<br />
Badakhshan Autonomous Region”; its capital is Khorog, on the River<br />
Gunt near its embouchure into the Panj.Most of the inhabitants speak<br />
their own Iranian idioms; moreover, they also profess special forms of<br />
Islam, chiefly that of the Ismaili sect (one of the three main denominations<br />
of Shii Islam; they recognize the Agha Khan as their spiritual<br />
head).The territory of Badakhshan is not limited to this “Mountain<br />
Badakhshan” region, however; in fact, its most important and historically<br />
best remembered portion lies in Afghanistan on the southern, left<br />
bank of the Panj’s wide bend northward, with this river’s tributary<br />
Kokcha crossing it as it descends from the Hindukush mountains.The<br />
capital of the vilayat of Afghan Badakhshan, Fayzabad, was founded in<br />
the seventeenth century, but the city of Jurm, a short distance upstream<br />
on the Kokcha, has a history almost as ancient as the province itself.The<br />
latter’s antiquity was proverbial, with reminiscences of the campaign of<br />
Alexander the Great not quite extinct: Badakhshan’s rulers liked to trace<br />
their ancestry to the great conqueror, even when they had sprung from<br />
an Uzbek stock like the last local dynasty of Yarids who, having founded<br />
Fayzabad, maintained themselves there until the nineteenth century.<br />
Badakhshan was in antiquity and the Middle Ages traversed by long-distance<br />
trade routes used by such famous travelers as Marco Polo, and it<br />
gained fame for its rubies and as the only known source of lapis lazuli<br />
which was exported far and wide but especially to India.<br />
To the east of Afghan Badakhshan and south of Tajikistan’s<br />
Badakhshan Region extends the quaint Afghan “finger,” which was<br />
created in 1895 to separate the Russian and British empires.It is crossed<br />
latitudinally by the Vakhan, a river considered by some geographers as<br />
the uppermost course of the Amu Darya; the Vakhan combines with the<br />
Pamir river to produce the Panj.Today the “Afghan finger” separates<br />
Tajikistan from Pakistan and Kashmir.<br />
Delimiting Transoxania to the north poses no problem if we choose<br />
the other great river of Central Asia, Syr Darya, as its boundary on that<br />
side (and thus view it as a Central Asian Mesopotamia, a term occasionally<br />
applied to it in Russian geographical literature as Mezhdurechie).<br />
Called Iaxartes by the Greek geographers and Sayhun by the Arab ones,<br />
this river rises near the highest peaks of Tianshan in eastern Kyrgyzstan<br />
and, known as Naryn, flows westward through much of the republic<br />
before crossing the Uzbek border and entering Fergana, where it<br />
receives the Kara Darya near the historic city of Andijan.Known
14 A history of Inner Asia<br />
henceforth as the Syr Darya, the river crosses the whole length of that<br />
province from east to west.It then reaches the valley’s only opening free<br />
of mountain barriers, an area where the western outcroppings of the<br />
Tianshan and Pamir ranges approach each other from the north and<br />
south but do not meet.The city of Khujand (also spelled Khojand and<br />
Khodzhend), on or near the site of Alexandria Eschate, “Alexandria the<br />
Furthest,” founded by Alexander the Great in 328 BC, and called<br />
Leninabad between 1936 and 1991, lies near this opening.It is today the<br />
administrative center of a district protruding here from Tajikistan.<br />
Having crossed this Tajik protrusion and skirted Khujand, the Syr<br />
Darya re-enters Uzbekistan and flows by the capital, Tashkent, before<br />
exiting the republic a short distance to the north of the city; it enters<br />
Kazakh territory and starts its long course northwestward toward the<br />
Aral Sea in a direction roughly parallel to that of the Amu Darya.<br />
Such a definition of Transoxania, however, is rather artificial, and it<br />
may be better to emphasize only the undisputable fact that Transoxania<br />
is that part of Central Asia which lies to the north of the middle course<br />
of the Amu Darya.This will enable us to view also certain segments of<br />
the area that lie on the right, northern bank of the Syr Darya as part of<br />
historic Transoxania.They include such cities as Tashkent, the capital<br />
of modern Uzbekistan and metropolis of Central Asia.<br />
Nevertheless, once we cross the Syr Darya, we stand on the threshold<br />
of the immense Eurasian plain, and the long low range of the Kara Tau<br />
protruding from the western Tianshan into southern Kazakhstan no<br />
more changes the picture than do the occasional highlands farther<br />
north.Here loomed the realm of the Eurasian Turkic nomads when the<br />
Arabs launched the conquest of Transoxania in the first decades of the<br />
eighth century, and they appropriately called it “Bilad al-Turk,” Land of<br />
the Turks or “Turkistan,” in contrast to “Mawarannahr.” Today,<br />
Turkestan (to follow the spelling common in Russian and other Western<br />
languages) means almost the reverse – historic Transoxania and northern<br />
(Turkmen) Khurasan – but that has resulted from a process which<br />
began some three centuries after the Arab conquest and received official<br />
sanction only after the Russians conquered Central Asia in the nineteenth<br />
century.<br />
In our discussion of Transoxania, Khwarazm, Tokharistan, and<br />
Fergana we have emphasized the fertility of these territories as irrigated<br />
lands.The contrast presented by the vaster tracts that have not benefited<br />
from irrigation is thus especially striking: the Kyzyl Kum desert of<br />
Uzbekistan and Kara Kum desert of Turkmenistan are only the largest
Introduction 15<br />
and most notorious examples, counterparts to the still more inhospitable<br />
Taklamakan desert of Eastern Turkestan.<br />
Fergana, as we have said, is surrounded by the Tianshan and Pamir<br />
mountain ranges on three sides: on the north, south, and east.Both<br />
systems are also known by local names applied to their specific segments;<br />
thus Tianshan’s Kungey and Terskey Alatoo, the ranges to the north and<br />
south of the Issyk Kul (“Warm Lake” in Kyrgyz) in Kyrgyzstan, for<br />
example.The elevation of this natural wall separating Western from<br />
Eastern Turkestan is breathtaking – a number of peaks over 5,000 meters<br />
high, with such giants as Zhengish Chokusu (the less well known but<br />
more appropriate Kyrgyz version of the Russian name Pik Pobedy,<br />
“Victory Peak”) on the Kyrgyz–Sinkiang border (7,439 meters), Garmo<br />
in Tajikistan (7,495 meters; the highest mountain of the former Soviet<br />
Union, it was then called Pik Kommunizma, “Communism Peak”), or,<br />
still higher, Kungur in Sinkiang (7,719 meters).The Pamir ranges (nicknamed,<br />
in nineteenth-century travel literature, as the “Roof of the<br />
World”) fan out through Tajikistan and Sinkiang into Afghanistan,<br />
Pakistan, Tibet, and India under such names as Kunlun, Karakoram,<br />
Hindukush, and Himalayas.Incredible though it may sound, this convergence<br />
of giant mountain chains was the crossroads, in antiquity and<br />
the Middle Ages, of the celebrated Silk Road – caravan tracks that linked<br />
Inner Asia and China with India, the Middle East, and the<br />
Mediterranean world.Man found ways to penetrate them through<br />
passes some of which lie higher than peaks considered lofty elsewhere<br />
(for example Bedel in Kyrgyzstan, 4,288 meters, or Akbaital in<br />
Tajikistan, 4,655 meters; or the track linking India with Sinkiang through<br />
Srinagar–Gilgit–Hunza–Tashkurgan–Kashgar, with Karakoram’s K2<br />
or Godwin Austen, the second highest mountain in the world – 8,611<br />
meters high – not far to the east of there).<br />
To the east of Fergana but separated from it by the Tianshan and<br />
Pamir ranges extends the Tarim basin, in some respects a mirror image<br />
of the Fergana valley but much vaster and starker.Sinkiang, of which it<br />
is a part, is an administrative term covering a larger area; no adequate<br />
generally accepted name exists for the region we are referring to now,<br />
but “Tarim basin” comes closest to meeting that need.It is a roughly<br />
elliptical area encompassed by three groups of mountain systems: the<br />
Tianshan on the north and northwest, the Pamirs on the southwest, and<br />
the Kunlun, Altyntagh, and Nanshan on the south and southeast.As in<br />
Transoxania, here too human settlement has depended on water<br />
brought by streams descending from the mountains.Three of these
16 A history of Inner Asia<br />
streams, the Yarkand, Aksu, and Khotan, eventually combine to<br />
produce the Tarim, a river that then doggedly pursues an easterly course<br />
through the Taklamakan desert toward the lake Lob Nor, which,<br />
however, it seldom reaches.A fourth river, the Kashgar – originating on<br />
the Kyrgyz side of the border as Kyzylsu, “Red River,” near the sources<br />
of its aforementioned namesake that flows west to become the Vakhsh –<br />
after having passed by the city of Kashgar, flows toward the confluence<br />
of the other three but disappears in the sands of the Taklamakan before<br />
reaching it.<br />
The ellipse of the basin surrounded by mountains extends farther east<br />
beyond Lob Nor, and can be viewed as closed, after having crossed the<br />
Sinkiang–Kansu border, at the town of Anshi.A glance at the map<br />
reveals a string of oasis towns along two imaginary lines that branch out,<br />
at Anshi, north and south, and, hugging the foothills of the surrounding<br />
mountains and themselves surrounding the western Gobi and<br />
Taklamakan deserts, close the ellipse as they meet again at the city of<br />
Kashgar in westernmost Sinkiang.These are the oasis towns famous for<br />
two reasons – the unique civilization that developed in some of them,<br />
and their function as way stations of the Silk Road network.Just to name<br />
the most famous ones, proceeding counterclockwise from Anshi: Hami,<br />
Turfan, Karashahr, Kucha, Aksu, Kashgar (east–west, the northern part<br />
of the ellipse); Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Niya, Charkhlik, Tunhuang,<br />
and back to Anshi (west–east, its southern part).<br />
Today, as we have implied, all these places except Anshi and<br />
Tunhuang are in Sinkiang.Sinkiang (from hsin kiang = new province; we<br />
follow here the customary transcription; the correct pronunciation of<br />
this Chinese name is shin chiang) is a name given the region in the aftermath<br />
of the 1758 conquest by China; this name was used still more<br />
emphatically after the fuller integration of Sinkiang into Chinese<br />
administrative structure in 1884.As we have pointed out, the word has<br />
a more comprehensive connotation than the Tarim basin because it also<br />
covers the large territory to the north of the Tianshan range.When they<br />
wanted to differentiate between these two parts, the Chinese used the<br />
terms Nanlu and Peilu (“Southern route” and “Northern route”).Nanlu<br />
thus corresponds to our Tarim basin.The latter term is a nineteenthcentury<br />
scholarly creation, and it is not the only one; Kashgaria is<br />
another frequently used name, popular especially in French historiography<br />
(La Kachgarie) because of the importance of the region’s western<br />
metropolis.The inhabitants themselves never had a truly comprehensive<br />
name for their country, with the partial exception of Altishahr and
Introduction 17<br />
Uighuristan; the former name means “six cities” in Turkic, the cities<br />
being Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Aksu, Kucha, and Uch (or Ush)<br />
Turfan, all in the western half of the Tarim basin.Uighuristan was so<br />
named after the Turkic Uighurs who in the ninth century founded a<br />
kingdom whose capital was Qocho, now an archaeological site a short<br />
distance from Turfan in the eastern half of the Tarim basin.The two<br />
groups thus also indicate a secondary but nonetheless important division<br />
of Nanlu into a western and eastern segment, a division implied by the<br />
names “Altishahr” and “Uighuristan.”<br />
The oasis town of Turfan itself deserves attention for several reasons.<br />
One is geographical, for it lies in a depression – at 154 meters below sea<br />
level, it is the second lowest point on earth after the Dead Sea.Another<br />
is linguistic and cultural, for the inhabitants of this area used to speak<br />
Tokharian, the aforementioned non-Iranian Indo-European tongue,<br />
before they were Turkicized; and they created a remarkable Manichaean<br />
and Buddhist civilization that survived under the Uighur Turks for<br />
several more centuries until the completion of Islamization in the<br />
fifteenth century.And finally, while Turfan functioned as one of the way<br />
stations in Nanlu, it also was the starting point of a route that struck out<br />
northwest through a break in the Tianshan mountains toward Peilu and<br />
joined there the rival network of routes along the northern side of the<br />
Tianshan range.The name Turfan came into current usage only at the<br />
end of the Middle Ages, after the settlement that had existed there grew<br />
and absorbed the population of the historical Qocho, some 30 kilometers<br />
to the east.This was a reprise of an earlier shift when the town of<br />
Yar-khoto (a Turco-Mongol name; the site is also known by its Chinese<br />
name, Chiao-ho), some 10 kilometers to the west of Turfan, was abandoned<br />
in favor of Qocho in the early centuries of the Christian era.Both<br />
Yar-khoto and Qocho are precious archaeological sites today; so would<br />
probably be yet another city that pertained to the same civilization:<br />
Bishbalik or Peiting, some 100 kilometers due north of Turfan.But<br />
Bishbalik was on the other side of the Tianshan mountains, and climatic<br />
conditions are different there: the greater moisture characteristic of the<br />
northern slopes of Inner Asian mountains obliterated Bishbalik, once it<br />
was abandoned, to the point where modern archaeologists had great<br />
difficulties locating the site, at first wrongly identifying it with Urumchi,<br />
which lies some 50 kilometers to the west.<br />
Nanlu and Peilu are terms no longer used, and Sinkiang is subdivided<br />
into a number of districts according to geographical, ethnolinguistic,<br />
and administrative criteria; nevertheless, the two names did express a
18 A history of Inner Asia<br />
lasting and emphatic contrast between southern and northern Sinkiang.<br />
Let us start, however, with a certain analogy between them: like southern<br />
Sinkiang, northern Sinkiang consists of a core that is a vast plain<br />
encompassed by several mountain chains: in this case a triangle formed<br />
by the Tianshan on the south, the Altai on the northeast, and the<br />
Tarbagatai and Jungarian Alatau on the northwest.This area is known<br />
as Jungaria (also spelled Zungaria and Dzhungaria), after the Jungars or<br />
Zungars, a Mongol people who built there a powerful state in the seventeenth<br />
century and despite the fact that they were virtually exterminated<br />
by Manchu troops in 1758–59.China had to reconquer Sinkiang in<br />
1877 during a revolt led from Kashgar and Yarkand by a Muslim Turk<br />
named Yaqub Beg, and it was then that Urumchi (renamed Tihwa, a<br />
name that was dropped after the Communist victory in 1949) became<br />
the definitive capital of the “New Province.” Before the revolt, the<br />
Chinese governor resided at Kulja (also known by its Chinese name<br />
Ining), a city in the valley of the Ili by the site of medieval Almaliq, and<br />
thus in one of the historic passageways along the southern fringe of the<br />
Eurasian steppe belt.As part of that belt, Jungaria was a land of<br />
nomads, in contrast to the Tarim basin, land of sedentaries.In historic<br />
times the nomads have been, as we have said, mainly Turks and Mongols<br />
in contrast to the Iranian and Tokharian agriculturists and urban dwellers.In<br />
the nineteenth century, however, there began a steady stream of<br />
chiefly agricultural immigrants from Nanlu to the more fertile fringes of<br />
Jungaria such as the Ili valley; these Turki-speaking settlers (basically<br />
Turkicized Iranians) came to be known as Taranchis, “agriculturalists,”<br />
and they eventually played an important role in forging the sense of<br />
common identity between the main ethnic components of southern and<br />
northern parts of Sinkiang.<br />
On the east, Sinkiang borders Mongolia and China’s province of<br />
Kansu.Astride the Sino-Mongolian border lies the legendary Gobi,<br />
which occupies sizable portions of southern Mongolia and of China’s<br />
Inner Mongolia.The Gobi is not a true desert like the Taklamakan or<br />
Sahara for example, but a gravelly plain with patches of sparse vegetation<br />
able to support some livestock such as camels, horses, and yaks.In<br />
the western half of Mongolia the Gobi is delimited on the north by the<br />
Altai, the aforementioned long mountain range that extends here diagonally<br />
(northwest–southeast) from southern Siberia.The somewhat<br />
smaller but still impressive Hangai range lies parallel to the Altai farther<br />
northeast, where it is followed by yet another range, the Hentei.A broad,<br />
grassy plain stretches between the Hangai and Hentei mountains, and
Introduction 19<br />
is traversed by a number of rivers descending from them and then<br />
turning north toward Siberia.Two of these, the Orkhon and the Tula,<br />
are associated with several crucial stages of Turkic and Mongol history.<br />
It was along the Orkhon that the first Turkic empires had their political<br />
and religious centers: the Kök Turks erected here their eighth-century<br />
funerary monuments famous for commemorative inscriptions, and the<br />
Uighur Turks had their ordubaligh or capital, Qarabalghasun, in the same<br />
general area during the eighth and ninth centuries.When in the thirteenth<br />
century the Mongols moved to this area from the east, replacing<br />
the Turks, they founded here Qaraqorum as the charismatic center of<br />
the Genghisid empire (a decision made by Genghis Khan, but carried<br />
out only by his son Ögedey in 1235).Qaraqorum in turn dwindled with<br />
the collapse of that empire, but the site’s charismatic role re-emerged in<br />
1586 when the Mongols, converting to Lamaistic Buddhism, built there<br />
the prestigious monastery Erdeni Dzu.<br />
The Orkhon rises in the Hangai and eventually receives the Tula,<br />
which originates in the Hentei range.It was to the valley of the Tula that<br />
the center of religious and political gravity moved in subsequent centuries;<br />
the at first peripatetic Urga, the headquarters of Bogdo Gegen, the<br />
chief lama who eventually also became the political head of the theocratic<br />
state, stabilized there by 1779.In 1924 Urga was renamed Ulan<br />
Bator (“Red Hero” in Mongolian, where it is spelled Ulaanbaatar), a<br />
name change symbolizing the transformation of Mongolia from a<br />
Buddhist monarchy to a Communist republic.<br />
The Hentei range also gives rise to two other important rivers, the<br />
Onon and Kerulen.Although their sources lie close to those of the Tula,<br />
they flow east and eventually cross Mongolia’s border, the Onon entering<br />
Siberia and the Kerulen China.It was between these two rivers that<br />
a people called Mongols emerged in the twelfth century, having moved<br />
there from their earlier habitat, believed to have been the adjacent forest<br />
zone to the north.When Temujin was acclaimed as their supreme leader<br />
and assumed the title of Genghis Khan in 1206, the ceremony took<br />
place on a sacred mountain called Burkan Kaldun somewhere among<br />
the eastern slopes of the Hentei range near the sources of the Onon.<br />
If the territory between the Onon and the Kerulen can be viewed as<br />
the staging area of the Mongols readying themselves for the conquest of<br />
the world, the immediate neighborhood to the southeast was the home<br />
of their close relatives, the Tatars.This name and group, which appear<br />
in the Orkhon inscriptions as well as in Chinese sources, had a<br />
destiny inverse to that of the Mongols: as a people, the Tatars were partly
20 A history of Inner Asia<br />
exterminated, partly absorbed in the early stage of Genghis Khan’s conquests.As<br />
a name, the word Tatar was applied by contemporary onlookers<br />
and victims – whether Chinese, European, or Muslim – to the<br />
Mongols themselves at the expense of their real ethnonym.<br />
The Gobi straddles, as we have said, the Sino-Mongolian border.So<br />
do the Mongols themselves, for several tribes remained on the Chinese<br />
side of the Gobi after the collapse of Mongol rule in China in 1368.One<br />
of these were the Ordos, whose name still survives in that of the region<br />
within the great arc which the Hwangho (Yellow River) forms on its<br />
course from Tibet to the Pacific Ocean.The last dynasty to rule China,<br />
the Ching or Manchus (1644–1911), gained firm control of the Mongols<br />
south of the Gobi, and treated their territory as one more province of<br />
the Chinese empire.The extent of this province varied with time, and<br />
shrank commensurably with the curtailment of Mongol ethnic rights<br />
during the rule of Nationalist and then Communist Chinese regimes,<br />
before a dramatic restoration of both aspects – size and liberties – since<br />
1979.Today, the territory of the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region,<br />
whose regional capital is Huehot or Hu-ho-hao-t’e (a transcription that<br />
tries to express the Mongol name, Khukhe-khoto, “Blue City”; Paotou,<br />
an industrial center farther west, is larger and better known), even surpasses<br />
that of Mongolia (1,770,000 sq.km.as compared with 1,565,000<br />
sq.km.).<br />
By 1691 the Manchus also gained suzerainty over the Mongols in<br />
Mongolia itself, but treated their territory in a radically different manner,<br />
that is, as the dynasty’s family possession (and, in administrative terms,<br />
as an autonomous protectorate) rather than as a Chinese province (a situation<br />
similar to that of Sinkiang between 1758 and 1884).Migration<br />
of Chinese settlers, mainly peasants, to Inner Mongolia was allowed and<br />
often encouraged, but forbidden to what became known in the West as<br />
Outer Mongolia.As a result, Mongols became a minority in Inner<br />
Mongolia, whereas they form the only population of the Republic of<br />
Mongolia except for a relatively small group of Kazakhs (many of whom<br />
have emigrated to Kazakhstan since its independence in 1991) in the<br />
extreme west and a still smaller one of Tuvans in the north.<br />
On the north, Mongolia borders Siberia, more specifically four segments<br />
of the Russian Federation; proceeding from west to east, we see<br />
the Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region, the Tuvan Autonomous<br />
Republic, the Buriat Mongol Autonomous Republic, and the Chita<br />
Region.It is a large lake, Baikal, that first catches a map-viewer’s eye,<br />
however.The River Orkhon joins the Selenga as the two approach the
Introduction 21<br />
border cities of Sükhbaatar (Mongol side) and Kiakhta (Russian side),<br />
and the Selenga then heads toward Baikal, passing by Buriatia’s capital,<br />
Ulan Ude, shortly before flowing into the lake.The Buriats or northern<br />
Mongols, Buddhists like their southern kinsmen, do not appear to have<br />
played any significant historical role, but their territory assumed some<br />
importance in the nineteenth century as a gateway for Russian influence<br />
reaching Mongolia usually by way of Kiakhta.The Russian presence in<br />
Siberia, a fundamental factor ever since the seventeenth century, is symbolized<br />
here by Irkutsk, which lies a short distance to the northwest of<br />
Baikal’s southern tip.A little farther west is a mountain range, the<br />
Eastern Sayan, which together with the Western Sayan and a third<br />
range, the Tannu Ola on the south along the Mongol border, encompasses<br />
the greater part of the Tuva Autonomous Republic, a geographical<br />
formation somewhat resembling northern Sinkiang (Jungaria),<br />
though smaller.The great Siberian river Yenisei originates in Tuva,<br />
owing its existence to a number of mountain streams which rise in the<br />
Eastern Sayan and gradually combine as two branches, the Biy Khem<br />
and Ka Khem.These two rivers then converge at Kyzyl, the capital of<br />
Tuva, to form the Yenisei.The latter soon changes its westerly course to<br />
a northerly one as it prepares to break through the Western Sayan and<br />
embark on its course toward the Arctic Ocean.The people who inhabited<br />
the area along the upper Yenisei were in antiquity and the Middle<br />
Ages the Kyrgyz, tribes speaking a Turkic language and sharing some of<br />
the same culture that animated the Kök Turks and Uighurs of the<br />
Orkhon valley.The Tuvans of today also speak a Turkic idiom, and may<br />
be partly descended from the Kyrgyz; the latter, however, mostly<br />
migrated west and eventually constituted the principal population of<br />
modern Kyrgyzstan.The Tuvans themselves, like their Buriat neighbors<br />
to the east, underwent strong influence from the south and converted to<br />
Buddhism, the only Turkic-speaking group to do so besides the historical<br />
Uighurs.Eventually, however, Russian presence had a decisive<br />
impact both culturally and demographically, and in this sense Tuva has<br />
become, like Buriatia, an inseparable component of Russia’s Siberia.<br />
Yet another Mongol group, the Oirats or Western Mongols, used to<br />
live between the upper Yenisei and Lake Baikal, to the east of the Kyrgyz<br />
and north of the Tuvans.In the fifteenth century they embarked on a<br />
long series of migrations and conquests analogous to those of Genghis<br />
Khan’s Eastern Mongols, but never as brilliant or successful.<br />
The Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region of the Russian Federation, the<br />
capital of which is Gorno-Altaisk, is situated between Tuva and
22 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Kazakhstan, bordering on the south the western tip of Mongolia and<br />
the northern tip of Sinkiang.It is on its territory that the Altai mountain<br />
range rises and then extends diagonally, from northwest to southeast, all<br />
the way to southern Mongolia.The Turkic-speaking inhabitants, now<br />
outnumbered by the Russians, escaped the impact of the major religions<br />
that had affected other Turks and Mongols; instead, they retained vestiges<br />
of their ancestral shamanism until its elimination by modernizing<br />
trends from Russia.<br />
The border between Kazakhstan and Sinkiang – the northwestern<br />
side of the Jungarian triangle discussed above – presents a special interest<br />
as the historic divide between the eastern and western halves of Inner<br />
Asia.It was through its river valleys or mountain passes that most<br />
nomadic migrations and troop movements in either direction took place.<br />
The valley of the Irtysh, separating the Altai range from the Tarbagatai,<br />
was one such passageway.Another was the smaller valley of the Emil<br />
which rises in Tarbagatai and flows into Lake Alakol on the Kazakh side.<br />
Farther south is the almost legendary “Jungarian Gate,” a break in the<br />
Jungarian Alatau range through which nomads and armies could pass<br />
between Jungaria and Kazakhstan.Yet another route was the valley of<br />
the Ili river, which separates the Jungarian Alatau from the Tianshan;<br />
this long and broad valley was also a favorite camping and grazing<br />
ground of many nomads, especially of the Genghisid Mongols.Roads<br />
built in recent times have followed these natural formations: the most<br />
significant case is the recently completed railway passing through the<br />
Jungarian Gate and linking Urumchi with the Kazakh capital Almaty<br />
via the station of Aktogay on the Turksib (Turkestan–Siberia railway).<br />
The Ili flows into Lake Balkhash, whose elongated shape and surface<br />
size reminds us of the superficially similar Baikal; the similarity ends<br />
there, though, for whereas the latter is very deep (in volume of water,<br />
Baikal is the world’s largest lake), the former is shallow, and while both<br />
support some fishing, the marine life of Baikal is infinitely richer and<br />
more unusual, including, for example, a herd of seals.Another<br />
difference is the fact that whereas Baikal, fed by such rivers as the<br />
Selenga, also has an outflow, the Angara, which joins the Yenisei and<br />
thus the Arctic Ocean, Balkhash is a landlocked lake.Besides the Ili, it<br />
receives several other rivers, chiefly from the Tianshan and Jungarian<br />
Alatau ranges.This may be the reason why the area between these<br />
mountains and Balkhash used to be called Jetisu, a Turkic word meaning<br />
“Seven Rivers,” hence the more commonly known Russian translation<br />
Semireche (this is the form we shall use in our book).Since Semireche
Introduction 23<br />
never was an official name, except for the half-century of the Tsarist era,<br />
it lacks precise delimitations, although Lake Balkhash and the Tianshan<br />
mountains can be assigned the role of its northern and southern brackets.The<br />
rivers Talas and Ili can assume the same role on the west and<br />
east (unless we assign this role to the expanded borders represented by<br />
the mountain range of Karatau and by Lake Alakol).Semireche is an<br />
area where sedentaries and nomads have met at various points in history<br />
– coexisting, overlapping, or competing – because it lends itself to both<br />
ways of life (as do, in fact, many other parts of the Eurasian steppe).At<br />
the time of the Arab conquest of Transoxania, Semireche’s southern<br />
fringe had a flourishing agricultural and urban population chiefly composed<br />
of the same Sogdian stock, engaged in irrigated or dry farming,<br />
professing one or another of the main religions – Zoroastrianism,<br />
Buddhism, or Christianity – entertaining a lively exchange with the<br />
Turkic nomads, and acknowledging, when necessary, their suzerainty.<br />
This prosperity continued and even increased after the spread of Islam<br />
here in the tenth century, which began with the conquest of the westernmost<br />
segment of Semireche and then made giant strides with the voluntary<br />
conversion of entire Turkic tribes.In the eleventh century,<br />
Semireche became the senior province of the Qarakhanid dynasty, and<br />
shone with a florescence of Turkic–Islamic culture.This came to an end<br />
after the Mongol invasion, but not through the standard method of<br />
willful destruction accompanying the conquest; here it resulted from the<br />
fact that the Mongols preferred to live in Semireche, grazing their herds,<br />
holding there their quriltays (conventions), or fighting their internecine<br />
wars.Agricultural and urban civilization ultimately succumbed to the<br />
nomads’ way of the Mongols, and reappeared only after the Russian<br />
conquest in the 1860s.A small settlement which the natives called Alma-<br />
Ata or Almaty was then developed as the administrative center of<br />
Semireche under the name Vernyi (“The Loyal [City]”), before recovering<br />
its original Turkic name (the etymology of Alma-Ata or Almaty suggests<br />
the presence of apple trees or orchards, from alma = apple).<br />
Bishkek, the capital of the future Kyrgyzstan but then a modest fort, was<br />
also included in the oblast of Semireche.<br />
After the Mongols modified Semireche to suit their lifestyle, the region<br />
came to be called Moghulistan (or Mongolistan, “Land of the<br />
Mongols”; the form Moghulistan is based on its spelling in the Arabic<br />
alphabet, which tended to omit the abraded sound n from the word<br />
“Mongol”).The name also acquired a political connotation as the patrimony<br />
of the Chaghatayid branch of the Genghisids who ruled the area,
24 A history of Inner Asia<br />
in contrast to Transoxania and Khurasan ruled by the Timurids.The<br />
area of Moghulistan was not quite identical with that of Semireche, for<br />
it also comprised a substantial portion of the Tianshan mountains,<br />
roughly the northern part of modern Kyrgyzstan with Lake Issyk Kul as<br />
a prominent landmark.Farther east, thus in modern Sinkiang,<br />
Moghulistan bordered Uighuristan, which for some time was also under<br />
the Chaghatayids; on the south and southeast, Sinkiang’s Tarim basin<br />
too was ruled by them and was thought of as part of Moghulistan.This<br />
concept was eventually replaced by other regional names; here it was<br />
Altishahr, the aforementioned area marked by oasis towns headed by<br />
Kashgar.<br />
The name Moghulistan was thus eventually forgotten, and Semireche<br />
gained prominence as the official name of one of the principal districts<br />
of Russia’s Governorate-general of Turkestan.The name Semireche in<br />
turn disappeared with the collapse of the Tsarist regime and the redrawing<br />
of internal boundaries carried out by the Soviet government.The<br />
northern part of Semireche fell to Kazakhstan, the southern to<br />
Kyrgyzstan.In the latter segment, several features deserve mention.The<br />
small town and military post of Bishkek became Kyrgyzstan’s capital; it<br />
was known from 1926 to 1991 as Frunze, named after Mikhail Vasilevich<br />
Frunze, the Bolshevik general who during the consolidation of Soviet<br />
power at the center reconquered Central Asia for Russia.Bishkek lies in<br />
the valley of the Chu, a river that rises in the mountains of northern<br />
Kyrgyzstan and, after flowing east and approaching Lake Issyk Kul,<br />
turns and heads northwest toward Bishkek and the Kazakh border.Its<br />
valley, the home of Kyrgyzstan’s capital and other flourishing cities, likewise<br />
had been the scene of dense settlement from the early Middle Ages<br />
down to the Mongol period, as well as one of the favorite winter grounds<br />
of western Turkic qaghans and their Qarakhanid successors; their capitals<br />
Suyab and Balasaghun both lay in this valley.Not far from the<br />
sources of the Chu are also those of the Talas, which, however, pursues<br />
a westerly course from the start.Shortly after crossing the Kazakh<br />
border it passes by the city of Jambul, so named in the Soviet period in<br />
honor of the Kazakh poet Jambul (or Shambyl) Jabaev.Earlier the city<br />
was called Auliye Ata, presumably because of a Sufi saint (auliye) buried<br />
in the vicinity.Nearby lie the ruins of Taraz or Talas, remembered for a<br />
historic battle fought there in 751 between the Arabs and the Chinese.<br />
Finally Lake Issyk Kul (“Warm Lake,” Ysyk köl in Kyrgyz) deserves<br />
mention for its historical interest, natural beauty, and importance for<br />
modern Kyrgyzstan as a tourist resort.Its shores too were the nomads’
Introduction 25<br />
favorite winter camping ground, and the town of Barskaun or Barskhan,<br />
on its southern shore, functioned as a place of trade and a way station<br />
on the Silk Road network.<br />
We have already proposed the Syr Darya as the northern limit of<br />
Transoxania, a demarcation line beyond which, as we have said, lay<br />
what early Arab geographers called Turkestan (Bilad al-Turk or Turkistan),<br />
land of the Turkic nomads.A rather wide swath along the northern bank<br />
of the river, however, had the same physiognomy as Transoxania and<br />
Fergana, as we have pointed out, with irrigated agriculture, towns, trade<br />
routes, and a similar population of Sogdian stock, though with an<br />
increasing proportion of the Turkic element.This was especially true of<br />
the middle course of the Syr Darya, to the northeast and east of which<br />
loom the westernmost spurs of the Tianshan, ultimately protruding into<br />
the Kazakh steppe under the name of Karatau.Streams descending<br />
from those mountains created conditions similar to those along the<br />
Zarafshan.One of these streams is the Chirchik; an early town near its<br />
banks was Chach, which the Arabs (whose language and alphabet lack<br />
the consonant ch) spelled Shash or Tash, and which, with the addition of<br />
the common Sogdian suffix -kent, came to be known as Tashkent.Shash<br />
was also the name of the surrounding region, and it seems that a competing<br />
or earlier name for the city was Binkath before giving way to<br />
“Shash city,” Shashkent or Tashkent.A number of other towns<br />
appeared in this area.Some of them succumbed to the effects of the<br />
nomadic movements and wars which frequently afflicted the area; others<br />
have survived and even risen in prominence; still others are new administrative<br />
and logistical centers developed since the Russian conquest.<br />
Tashkent is the most obvious example; from among the others, Isfijab,<br />
Otrar, Yasi, Sighnaq, and Kyzyl Orda reflect the history of this area as<br />
a transition zone.Isfijab was situated on the northern bank of the Arys,<br />
a stream flowing into the Syr Darya, on the road from Tashkent to Taraz<br />
and on to Semireche at the fringe of the steppe.In the eighth and ninth<br />
centuries it thus had the function of a borderland city facing the world<br />
of the pagan Turks, and a rallying point for the ghazis, holy warriors of<br />
Islam penetrating the steppe with the new message.These ghazis often<br />
preferred communal living in separate structures known as rabats or<br />
ribats, fortified cloisters or hostels situated along the limes of the Dar al-<br />
Islam or as advanced posts beyond those limits.Such were the many<br />
rabats of Isfijab, financed in part by its citizenry.The religious zeal of<br />
the Isfijabis was to earn their city an honor they could not have foreseen<br />
at the time of their conversion: for Sayram, as Isfijab increasingly came
26 A history of Inner Asia<br />
to be called with the growing proportion of its Turkic element, is the<br />
birthplace of Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi, the great Sufi shaykh of Turkestan<br />
who was born there at the turn of the eleventh century.<br />
Otrar, an archaeological site today near the railroad juntion of Arys,<br />
was a town straddling the Syr Darya on the northern side of the estuary<br />
of the Arys; the area was known as Farab in the early Islamic period,<br />
with a town of the same name located a short distance downstream from<br />
Otrar on the Syr Darya.A settlement in the vicinity of Farab was the<br />
birthplace of al-Farabi (870–950), a Turk who, after receiving initial<br />
education at home, studied and taught in Baghdad and later in<br />
Damascus, gaining fame as one of the greatest philosophers of the<br />
Islamic world.Otrar eclipsed Farab by the thirteenth century, chiefly<br />
because of its role as a market and as a crossing of trade routes between<br />
the steppe and Sogdia.In 1218, a large merchant caravan that included<br />
envoys from Genghis Khan was detained here and then massacred, possibly<br />
on orders from the Khwarazmshah Muhammad; this incident is<br />
credited for having provoked the calamity of the Mongol invasion that<br />
descended on Central Asia two years later.Otrar itself, though it fell after<br />
a siege of several weeks, escaped destruction and continued as a way<br />
station well into the fifteenth century; it was here that Timur<br />
(Tamerlane), taken ill, died in 1405, and with him his projected campaign<br />
to conquer China.<br />
Some 40 kilometers to the north of Otrar was another frontier town,<br />
Yasi.In the twelfth century, the aforementioned native of Sayram,<br />
Khwaja Ahmad, lived in this area and inspired, with his example and<br />
mystical poems, a wide following which after his death coalesced into a<br />
tariqa or Sufi “path,” the Yasaviya or Yasavi order of dervishes.The<br />
founder himself was buried in Yasi, which later began to be called, after<br />
his honorific titles, Hazrat-i Turkistan or Shah-i Turkistan (the Saint of<br />
Turkestan, the Lord of Turkestan).Only the second part of these names<br />
has held ground, so that today the town is rather confusingly known as<br />
Turkestan or Turkistan.The shaykh’s tomb became a place of popular<br />
pilgrimage and veneration, and the magnificent mausoleum that<br />
Tamerlane had erected over it in the 1390s is one of the architectural<br />
gems of Central Asia.<br />
Another important town was Sighnaq, situated on the northern bank<br />
of the Syr Darya some 120 kilometers to the northwest of Yasi.Sighnaq<br />
distinguished itself as the headquarters of the steppe nomads attracted<br />
by the land south of the river, whether to invade Transoxania or to<br />
benefit from its proximity.The town itself was later abandoned and is
Introduction 27<br />
an archaeological site today, whereas Yasi/Turkestan not only survived,<br />
but also became one of the main railroad stations on the line connecting<br />
Tashkent with Orenburg, Moscow, and St.Petersburg.This line,<br />
built in the first years of the twentieth century, follows the northern bank<br />
of the Syr Darya and, some 200 kilometers downstream from Sighnaq,<br />
passes by Kyzyl Orda, a town founded in 1820 as a fortified frontier<br />
outpost of the khanate of Khoqand at the peak of its expansion.It was<br />
then called Aq Meshit (Kazakh for “White Mosque”); its strategic position<br />
made it a prime target for Russia’s incipient conquest of Central<br />
Asia, and the town fell in 1853.Its name was then changed to Perovsk<br />
in honor of General Perovskiy, the commander of the Russian troops.<br />
Kyzyl Orda means “Red Camp” in Kazakh, a name that replaced<br />
Perovsk in 1926 when the town became the capital of the Soviet republic<br />
of Kazakhstan, a distinction ceded in 1929 to Alma-Ata.One may<br />
ponder the similarity as well as the difference between the roles played<br />
by Sighnaq and Kyzyl Orda: both proved their strategic worth for invaders<br />
from the Kipchak steppe or as defense posts against them.Down to<br />
the sixteenth century, these invaders, whether Turkic or Mongol, were<br />
medieval nomads; in the nineteenth, they were the vanguard of a<br />
modern Western empire.<br />
Another town with still more modern associations, Jasaly, grew up on<br />
the right (northern) bank of the Syr Darya half-way between Kyzyl<br />
Orda and the Aral Sea.In the final decades of the USSR it acquired the<br />
important function of a support city for the “Soviet Cape Canaveral,”<br />
the space program base at Baikonur in central Kazakhstan; it was then<br />
renamed as Leninsk.In contrast to Jasaly/Leninsk, two historical cities<br />
on the lower Syr Darya are now archaeological sites.Not far downstream<br />
from where Leninsk was eventually to appear but on the bank of<br />
a now extinct branch of the Syr Darya lay Jand, near the modern town<br />
of Kazalinsk.Still farther downstream lay Yangikant, a town on the left<br />
(southern) side of the apex of the river’s delta by its debouchure into the<br />
Aral Sea.Both Jand and Yangikant played a significant role in the tenth<br />
and eleventh centuries as centers of interaction between the sedentary<br />
world to the south and that of the steppe nomads to the north.The merchants<br />
and urbanites of the settlements were Muslims by then, whereas<br />
the nomads, mostly Oghuz Turks, were still pagans or on the verge of<br />
conversion.<br />
If we draw a line due north from Yasi/Turkestan, we pass through the<br />
core of modern Kazakhstan.The republic’s territory coincides with the<br />
eastern two-thirds of what Muslim authors of the Middle Ages called
28 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the Dasht-i Kipchak, the Steppe of the Kipchak Turks.The Kipchak<br />
Turks, known to contemporary Russians as Polovtsians and to medieval<br />
Europe as Cumans, succeeded there the Scythians and Sarmatians of<br />
antiquity.Their presence eventually imposed itself even on the Mongol<br />
conquerors in the thirteenth century (besides absorbing such remnants<br />
as the Germanic Goths of the Crimea), for they Turkicized the Golden<br />
Horde, a political formation initially coterminous with the geographical<br />
concept of the Dasht-i Kipchak.The longitudinal backbone of the<br />
Dasht-i Kipchak was the middle and lower course of the Volga, since<br />
the early Middle Ages the lifeline of successive Turkic and Mongol states<br />
and the location of their capitals.Itil of the pre-Islamic and partly judaicized<br />
Turkic Khazars lay near the western arm of the river’s delta<br />
estuary, as later did Astrakhan, capital of a khanate of that name.The<br />
first capital of the Golden Horde, Saray Batu, lay in the same general<br />
area but a short distance to the northeast of the estuary, whereas the<br />
Horde’s second capital, New Saray, lay farther upstream near modern<br />
Volgograd but – like its predecessor – to the east of the river.Modern<br />
Kazakh territory approaches the Volga but does not quite reach it: the<br />
Russo-Kazakh border follows the river some distance upstream and then<br />
swerves east, skirting the southern outcroppings of the Ural mountains<br />
and then making a wide arc through western Siberia.This border somewhat<br />
belies the demographic transformation of much of the Dasht-i<br />
Kipchak into Russian territory, a process that started in the sixteenth<br />
century with the conquests of the khanates of Kazan and Astrakhan and<br />
continued until the days of the Soviet leader Khrushchev’s policy of<br />
“opening-up of virgin land,” a euphemism for the last wave of Russian<br />
colonization marking the 1950s.The effect has indeed been stronger<br />
than the present-day political borders suggest.Colonization by Slavic<br />
settlers, chiefly peasants, and by dwellers of newly developed towns<br />
spilled over the borders drawn in the early Soviet period, so that today<br />
much of northern Kazakhstan is predominantly Slavic, as are the autonomous<br />
republics of Tatarstan – which we could also view as a reincarnation<br />
of the khanate of Kazan – and of Bashkiria (Bashqurtistan in<br />
Bashkir).<br />
The town of Zhezkazgan lies at the geographical center of<br />
Kazakhstan.If we strike out due north from there and, crossing the<br />
northern half of the republic, enter the Russian Federation, the first district<br />
(oblast) that we meet is Tiumen, so named after its administrative<br />
center.The river Irtysh passes through this district, and at one point it<br />
receives the Tobol, which flows here from Kazakhstan.The city of
Introduction 29<br />
Tobolsk grew up at their confluence, but the site of another town slightly<br />
upstream on the Irtysh deserves special attention: Sibir, headquarters of<br />
the khanate of Sibir, conquered by the Russians in the final years of the<br />
sixteenth century.Sibir, also known as Isker, lay in an area where the<br />
Eurasian steppe belt merges with the continent’s forest zone, the taiga,<br />
then sparsely populated by Finnic and paleo-Siberian peoples.The<br />
khanate’s Turks, who absorbed some of these autochthones, came to be<br />
known as Siberian Tatars.The Kipchak Turkic-speaking khans of Sibir<br />
had ruled there from the thirteenth century to the sixteenth, and their<br />
realm represented the northernmost position ever occupied by an<br />
Islamic state.<br />
ethnolinguistic and religious identity of modern<br />
inner asia<br />
Ethnolinguistic Identity<br />
(a) Turkic Languages<br />
The principal nationalities in this group are the Kazakhs, Karakalpaks,<br />
Kyrgyz, Turkmens, Uzbeks, and Uighurs.They are called Turks because<br />
this essentially linguistic concept, despite its shortcomings, is the most<br />
practical common denominator recognized by medieval and modern<br />
scholars alike.In the past as at present, a number of Inner Asian nationalities<br />
have been felt to possess a common bond in the Turkic language<br />
of which they speak their own diverse idioms – not unlike the Russians,<br />
Czechs, Serbs, etc., who are Slavs because they speak their own versions<br />
of Slavic.The only nationality which today applies this term to itself and<br />
to its language to the exclusion of any other name, however, is that of<br />
the Turks of Turkey: the not uncommon paradox of a group that maintains<br />
certain features of its basic identity long after leaving its original or<br />
earlier habitat.For the sake of clarity, Turkish is the term used in English<br />
for the form of Turkic spoken in Turkey.<br />
Linguists divide the Turkic languages into several groups.The most<br />
commonly accepted system speaks of the Kipchak group (Kazakh,<br />
Karakalpak), Turki group (Uzbek, Uighur), and Oghuz group<br />
(Turkmen, Azeri, Turkish), although this classification has not received<br />
unanimous recognition and scholars are at a loss where to put Kyrgyz –<br />
whether to consider it Kipchak or Turki, or to propose yet another subdivision.For<br />
our purposes, a more relevant question is how close they<br />
are to each other, and whether they are mutually intelligible.The answer
30 A history of Inner Asia<br />
is that Turkmen, Azeri, and Turkish are close enough to allow adequate<br />
communication (barring occasional lexical problems, mostly of recent<br />
date); the same could be said of Kazakh and Kyrgyz.As for Uzbek and<br />
Uighur, they are almost identical, and could easily merge into one<br />
official language if political separation did not stand in the way; this separation<br />
is graphically illustrated by the different alphabets they use:<br />
Uzbek is written in the Cyrillic script (although there is now a plan, in<br />
Uzbekistan and the other three Turkic republics of Central Asia, to<br />
switch to the Roman alphabet), Uighur in the Arabic or, less commonly,<br />
in the Roman and Cyrillic scripts.The reality of this identity is also suggested<br />
by the fact that prior to the special turns brought about by political<br />
nationalism and alien, Soviet and Chinese, rule in the 1920s, the two<br />
languages were more commonly known as Turki.A similar factor of<br />
political separation and different alphabets affects the relationship<br />
between Turkish, Azerbaijani, and Turkmen: even they, under different<br />
political circumstances, could converge into one official language.On<br />
the other hand, if a gathering of Uzbeks, Turkmens, Kazakhs, and<br />
Kyrgyz tried to use their respective languages, the participants would<br />
run into such problems that they would probably resort to a different but<br />
commonly known language – at present Russian.If the Turks of Turkey<br />
and the Uighurs of Sinkiang – neither likely to know Russian – were also<br />
present, the gathering would have to endeavor to create an improvised<br />
common Turkic with varying degrees of success and failure.<br />
Nevertheless, the intrinsic kinship of the Turkic languages which<br />
concern us here has a powerful effect in two respects.A native speaker<br />
of any one of them, when exposed to any of the others, is likely to<br />
become used to the differences, and will up to a point be able to function<br />
in such a new milieu; and the fundamentally identical grammatical<br />
structure and lexical content of all of them make it feasible for him to<br />
learn the kindred idiom – if he makes the effort – better and faster than<br />
a member of an alien linguistic family could.This has important implications<br />
both for understanding the Turks’ recent history and for assessing<br />
their future relations: once the barriers represented by political<br />
boundaries are relaxed or removed, and the imposed alien writing<br />
systems are replaced by a unified one, the sense of common identity can<br />
pass to a level of practical reality with promising potential for the future<br />
of the whole area.In Central Asia, a powerful precedent existed in the<br />
form of Chaghatay Turkic, a literary form of Turki perfected in the<br />
fifteenth century and used by subsequent generations of writers and<br />
intellectuals until its proscription by the Soviets in the 1920s.
Introduction 31<br />
In linguistic terms, Turkic and Mongolian are agglutinative languages,<br />
structurally related and classified as the principal components of<br />
the Altaic group.Some scholars even suspect a distant kinship with<br />
Korean and Japanese.<br />
(b) Mongolian<br />
Linguists speak of three groups of Mongolian languages: eastern, northern,<br />
and western.They may be genetically related to Turkic languages;<br />
this kinship, however, is so remote that mutual intelligibility is out of the<br />
question.<br />
Eastern Mongolian is the official language of the Republic of<br />
Mongolia, and like the Turkic languages and Tajik, it is written in the<br />
Cyrillic alphabet.A combination of political and demographic factors<br />
has caused the aforementioned internal split within the area populated<br />
by the speakers of eastern Mongolian: for besides the two and a half<br />
million inhabitants of the Republic, over four million live to the south of<br />
the border, in the Mongol Autonomous Region of the People’s Republic<br />
of China.Here too, political separation has caused a cultural one, the<br />
usage of different scripts being the most visible example.In the Region,<br />
Mongolian is written not in the Cyrillic alphabet but in the Mongols’<br />
own traditional script, while at the same time all educated citizens are<br />
also literate in Chinese, in contrast to the Mongolian Republic, where<br />
this is true of Russian.<br />
Northern Mongolian is also known as Buriat, and is, together with<br />
Russian, the official language of the Buriat Autonomous Republic of the<br />
Russian Federation.Western Mongolian is also known as Kalmyk or<br />
Kalmuck, and is, again together with Russian, the official language of<br />
the Kalmyk Autonomous Republic of the Russian Federation.This<br />
republic is situated to the west of the Volga along the river’s lowermost<br />
course, with a short stretch of the Caspian coast as its southeastern limit,<br />
while its capital, Elista, is farther inland.<br />
(c) Tajik<br />
Tajik is virtually the same as Persian, the official language of Iran; the<br />
differences are so minor that if Tajikistan and Iran were united politically,<br />
a question of two languages would not arise.As in the case of the<br />
Turkic languages, an additional artificial barrier has been different<br />
alphabets – Tajik being written in the Cyrillic, Persian in the Arabic<br />
script; removal of this barrier by a return to the Arabic alphabet would<br />
not only make their sameness obvious, but would also create a belt of
32 A history of Inner Asia<br />
three Middle Eastern countries with Persian as the official language:<br />
Tajikistan, Afghanistan (where Persian – called there Dari – is one of the<br />
two official languages, the other being Pushtu, also an Iranian tongue),<br />
and Iran.Iranian languages form an important component of the Indo-<br />
European family, and together with the Slavic languages, they form the<br />
so-called “satem” branch.<br />
The origin and history of the ethnonym Tajik goes back to the name<br />
of an Arab tribe, the Tayy, who lived in the Iraqi confines of the last pre-<br />
Islamic Persian empire, that of the Sasanians.The Persians extended<br />
this name to Arabs in general, and the Sogdians followed their example.<br />
After the conquest of Central Asia by Muslims, not only Arabs but also<br />
increasing numbers of Persians and Sogdians professed the new religion,<br />
and all of these came to be comprised under the ethnonym “Tajik.”<br />
Eventually the Persian-speaking converts outnumbered the Arabs, and<br />
the ethnonym which had once been the name of an Arab tribe ended<br />
up being reserved for Persian-speaking Muslims of Central Asia and<br />
their language.<br />
It may be worthwhile to mention in this context yet another ethnonym,<br />
Sart, which in recent times designated the Turkic-speaking urban<br />
and agricultural population of Central Asia.It is at least as ancient as<br />
that of the Tajiks, and has an even more intriguing etymology; its ultimate<br />
fate, moreover, is a textbook case of the interaction of politics and<br />
linguistics.Sart goes back to a Sanskrit word meaning “caravan leader”<br />
(sarthavaha).Indians were among the earliest long-distance merchants on<br />
the Silk Road network, and the local populations ended up applying this<br />
term to such merchants in general.Eventually the Sogdians came to<br />
dominate the Silk Road trade, and the term began to be applied to them<br />
by their neighbors, the Turks and Mongols.The word thus gradually<br />
acquired a broader meaning that by the end of the Middle Ages became<br />
almost synonymous with Tajik: Persian-speaking urban and agricultural<br />
population of Central Asia, different from the nomadic or seminomadic<br />
Turks (known as such, Türk) of the same area.By then,<br />
however, many Turks had also settled as agriculturalists or town dwellers,<br />
and those were not thought of as Sarts, a fact clearly documented<br />
by such sources as Navai and Babur.For the time being, the difference<br />
between the ethnonyms Sart and Türk was clear; less clear-cut, though,<br />
was the relationship between Sart and Tajik; as we have said, they came<br />
close to being synonyms.Yet by the time the Russians conquered Central<br />
Asia in the nineteenth century, Sart was the name of the Turkic-speaking<br />
town dwellers and peasants of the region, in contrast to the Persian-
Introduction 33<br />
speaking Tajiks.A shift had thus occurred in the connotation of this ethnonym<br />
since the sixteenth century, and it was due to the last wave of<br />
Turkic invaders, the Uzbeks of the Dasht-i Kipchak.When they irrupted<br />
into Transoxania in 1500, they became masters of its mostly sedentary<br />
population which spoke either Turkic (Turki in this case) or Persian<br />
(Tajik).The Uzbeks did speak Turkic, but their own Kipchak dialect<br />
instead of Turki.This difference, but perhaps even more the different<br />
lifestyle, made them view the Turki-speaking sedentaries as an alien<br />
group, which had merged in their eyes with the Persian-speaking Sarts.<br />
The term Sart was thus transferred to Turki-speaking sedentaries of<br />
Central Asia.They did notice, however, that many of the sedentaries<br />
spoke Tajik, and this term, previously synonymous with Sart, began to<br />
be applied exclusively to the Tajik-speaking community.This was the situation<br />
when Central Asia became Russian Turkestan, and the new<br />
masters readily availed themselves of the latest terminology.Sarts were<br />
the Turki-speaking people of such cities as Bukhara, Samarkand,<br />
Tashkent, and of the agricultural countryside; Tajiks were their Persianspeaking<br />
neighbors (in some cases people were bilingual, to the point of<br />
not being sure whether they were Sarts or Tajiks).Meanwhile the former<br />
masters, the Uzbeks, had retained some of their nomadic lifestyle and<br />
continued to speak Kipchak (although when they rose to the level of high<br />
culture, they used either the aforementioned Chaghatay or Persian).<br />
Then came the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 with the “national delimitation”<br />
of 1924 as one of its later stages, and the Marxists of Moscow<br />
left their stamp even on the linguistic chart of Central Asia.Sart (both<br />
as ethnonym and as the name of a language) was proscribed as a<br />
demeaning term of the colonial period; Turki was shunned (no doubt<br />
because of its troubling usefulness to proponents of pan-Turkism); and<br />
Uzbek was proclaimed to be the name of the citizens of the new republic<br />
of Uzbekistan, and of the language they spoke.Yet it was not Uzbek<br />
the Soviet authorities imposed as the official language, but Turki, in<br />
other words, Sart – for that was the idiom they reached for, instead of<br />
the Kipchak of the Uzbeks, against initial objections from some of the<br />
indigenous leaders.One of the main differences between the two forms<br />
of Turkic resides in the domain of the so-called “vowel harmony.”<br />
Kipchak, like most other Turkic languages including Turkish of Turkey,<br />
requires all the vowels in a word to be either of the “front vowel” or of<br />
the “back vowel” type.Turki does not, however, and the explanation is<br />
sought in the Iranian substratum of the idioms spoken by the sedentaries<br />
of Central Asia.It is one of the riddles of Soviet psychology why
34 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Moscow bothered with such trifles.Why not let the Uzbeks speak, read,<br />
and write Uzbek, rather than the strongly Iranized Turki of the cities?<br />
Perhaps because in that case the Uzbeks, Kazakhs, and Karakalpaks<br />
might have become too aware of the closeness of the Kipchak dialects<br />
they spoke (which would have worked against one of the purposes of<br />
“national delimitation,” divide et impera), whereas Turki was spoken in an<br />
area by and large coterminous with Uzbekistan (with the qualification<br />
that this could be expanded by including Sinkiang, but that is another<br />
story).All that remained to be done was to call this Turki Uzbek, and the<br />
new nation was ready for its Soviet future.<br />
Religious and Cultural Identity<br />
The Turks and Tajiks are Sunni Muslims (except for the aforementioned<br />
inhabitants of Badakhshan, who are Shiites of the Ismaili denomination),<br />
and the Mongols Lamaistic Buddhists.This may sound incompatible<br />
with the official status of these polities as secular or, in the<br />
Communist period, militantly atheistic.Aside from the fact that ongoing<br />
political changes have restored to religion some of its erstwhile prestige,<br />
both Islam and Buddhism have played a powerful role in shaping the<br />
psychological, cultural, and economic climate, as well as the personal<br />
lifestyle, of these societies.Alien ideologies and political systems, and the<br />
inevitable upheavals brought about by modernization, will for a long<br />
time fail to obliterate the impact Islam and Buddhism have had on Inner<br />
Asia; above all, the two religions will always remain an indelible part of<br />
these peoples’ cultural heritage.<br />
(a) Islam<br />
The manner in which Islam (the specific meaning of this Arabic word is<br />
“self-surrender [to the will of God]”) penetrated Central Asia will be<br />
sketched in the historical segment of our book.Here a few words about<br />
its general traits as applicable to our area may be called for.Of the two<br />
main denominations, Sunni and Shii Islam, it is the former that has predominated<br />
in Central Asia.Sunni or orthodox Islam is the mainstream<br />
form of this religion, and bases its tenets on the central scripture that is<br />
the Koran, the revealed word of God as preached by His prophet<br />
Muhammad (Arabic, the literal meaning of this name being “The Most<br />
Praised One”) between the beginning of his mission early in the seventh<br />
century and his death in 632 (year 11 of the Islamic era, which began<br />
with Muhammad’s hijra – “emigration” – from Mecca to Medina in
Introduction 35<br />
622).The Koran was recorded in its definitive form under the caliph<br />
Uthman (644–56).An additional source of authority is the sunna or sum<br />
total of principles, precepts and examples emanating from the Prophet’s<br />
life and statements and their interpretation as recorded and developed<br />
by the Muslim community during the first three centuries – hence the<br />
name of orthodox or Sunni Islam.<br />
Islam is a religion that concerns itself not only with spiritual values,<br />
but also with the temporal aspects of life; a truly Muslim community<br />
thus has an Islamic government and Islamic laws: the caliph (from<br />
Arabic khalifa, [the Prophet’s] successor) is the imam or leader of this<br />
theocratic state (“imam,” however, also has a broader spectrum of connotations<br />
ranging from the prayer-leader at a mosque to the messianic<br />
mahdi of the Shiites), and the sharia or Islamic law is the foundation of all<br />
legislation.Abu Bakr (632–34) was the first caliph, and three others –<br />
Umar, Uthman, and Ali – succeeded him in Medina before a civil war<br />
rent the Muslim community asunder and gave birth to the other main<br />
denomination, the Shia.This war also led to the replacement of the<br />
non-dynastic caliphs residing in Medina by the first Sunni dynasty, that<br />
of the Umayyads (661–750), whose capital was Damascus.The cause of<br />
the schism can be traced back to the question of whether the role of the<br />
caliph should be reserved for a descendant of the prophet Muhammad.<br />
It was the Shiites (shia means “party,” implicitly Ali’s party), who opted<br />
for the latter.Since Muhammad’s only surviving child was a daughter,<br />
Fatima, they championed the legitimacy of the descendants of her<br />
union with Ali, the Prophet’s cousin and son-in-law.Ali, as we have said,<br />
was indeed the fourth caliph (656–61), but his political and military<br />
opponents, led by another Arab, Muawiya, outmaneuvered him until he<br />
was assassinated in the Iraqi town of Kufa by a member of yet another<br />
schismatic group, the Kharijites, in 661.By then Muawiya was installed<br />
in Damascus as the first Umayyad caliph.During this dynasty’s ninety<br />
years of rule Islam achieved a prodigious expansion that spanned a good<br />
portion of the former classical world between Spain and Central Asia.<br />
Like the Umayyads, their successors, the Abbasids (751–1258), were<br />
Sunni Muslims (with the qualification that their original claim to rule<br />
was partly based on their eponym’s kinship with the Prophet’s family; see<br />
below), but they ruled from their newly founded capital of Baghdad.<br />
Since its inception, Shii Islam has endeavored to assert its claim to rule<br />
with occasional success in certain parts of the Islamic world – Iran<br />
having been the area of its greatest success, starting with the sixteenthcentury<br />
Safavid dynasty and culminating in the Islamic revolution led by
36 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Ayatullah Khomeini – but it never really succeeded in Inner Asia.The<br />
two denominations were almost identical in those matters that concerned<br />
the temporal and ritualistic aspect of Islam.Even the crucial<br />
matter of legitimacy of rule caused less conflict than the Shii claim<br />
might have seemed likely to engender: for life under Sunni rulers, considered<br />
usurpers by the Shiites, was made possible by the role of the<br />
hidden imam who lives concealed among the faithful but will appear as<br />
the messianic mahdi or qaim only at the time of his choice to lead<br />
mankind to ultimate salvation.This hidden mahdi is the twelfth of the<br />
imams from Ali to Muhammad – not the Prophet but his descendant –<br />
in the “Ithna-Ashariya” or “Twelver” Shia, the largest of the three principal<br />
denominations of Shii Islam, since the sixteenth century dominant<br />
mainly in Iran.This doctrine freed the faithful from the duty of armed<br />
struggle against Sunni usurpation, and the Sunni rulers from the burden<br />
of suspecting or suppressing unceasing uprisings; by the same token,<br />
sovereigns of the Shii persuasion could rule without being accused of<br />
themselves usurping the reign from the rightful imam, because it is he<br />
who has not yet chosen to make his appearance.To be sure, bitter<br />
conflicts and bloody wars between Sunnites and Shiites did at times<br />
ravage parts of the Dar al-Islam, that is, the lands under Islamic rule.<br />
Moreover, another kind of cleavage between Sunni and Shii Islam could<br />
hardly be overemphasized: that of religious focus.Whereas the Sunnites<br />
expected immediate benefits and ultimate salvation from performing the<br />
basic duties prescribed by the Koran and the sharia (Islamic law), the<br />
Shiites, although as a rule not negating their importance, relied more on<br />
intercession by the imams, one or more members of the Ahl al-Bayt, the<br />
Prophet’s family.This reliance could reach a degree at which the intercessors<br />
assumed a considerable portion of divinity: in other words, the<br />
imams, especially Ali and even more his grandson Husayn, rather than<br />
the majestic but distant God, became the main objects of worship and<br />
expectations.Even these towering figures with dynastic credentials gradually<br />
had to cede some of their status to other descendants of the<br />
Prophet, who were proliferating all over the Islamic world, with their<br />
tombs as so many places of worship and pilgrimage bringing comfort to<br />
the crowds of the humble believers in the intimate and immediate way<br />
that an abstract God or a universal imam could not.These descendants<br />
of the Prophet were usually known by the epithet of sayyid (literally,<br />
“chief ”), a title that has remained a mark of distinction to this day.<br />
Nevertheless, even the Sunni Muslims eventually began to feel the<br />
need of bridging the chasm separating them from the austere God of the
Introduction 37<br />
Koran, and of finding a path to His more immediate and comforting<br />
presence.Those who first took steps in this direction came to be called<br />
Sufis (from Arabic suf, wool, from which woollen robes worn by them<br />
were made – hence also the term tasawwuf for Islamic mysticism).The<br />
Sufis focused more on the compassionate nature of God also present in<br />
the Koran, and created an elaborate and multifaceted system of practices<br />
to approach the no longer awesome Deity as a reassuring Friend.<br />
Eventually the men – known in the eastern Islamic world as dervishes –<br />
seeking ways toward mystical union with God began to form religious<br />
orders or tariqas (from Arabic tariqa, path [toward God]).The first such<br />
orders appeared in the twelfth century and soon spread throughout the<br />
Islamic world; most were known by the names of their founders, shaykhs<br />
(from Arabic shaykh, old man, elder; also known by such Persian and<br />
Turkic approximations as pir, khwaja, baba, or ata) who were often sayyids<br />
or who claimed another illustrious lineage such as that from the first<br />
caliph Abu Bakr, and who differed from each other chiefly in the way<br />
they strove to reach their mystical goal.On the concrete level, they<br />
formed communities that lived in cloisters known in Central Asia as<br />
khangahs (Persian, literally “place of abode,” also transliterated as khanqah<br />
and khanaqah; up to a point a synonym of the Arabic zawiya and ribat).A<br />
khangah complex could also include a mosque, accommodation for visitors<br />
and travelers, and a tomb or tombs of revered shaykhs, often<br />
sayyids; pilgrimage to such shrines, ziyarat (lit.“visit”), came to constitute<br />
one of the central religious rituals practiced by the masses of the Muslim<br />
faithful.The adepts themselves eventually developed a prodigiously rigorous<br />
and often sophisticated process of practices and rituals for attaining<br />
their mystical goal, but one element appears essential: that of dhikr,<br />
“recollection [of God]” in Arabic, which passed into Persian and Turkic<br />
as zikr.The method was to think of God to the exclusion of anything<br />
else, and could consist of a seemingly unending repetition of the first<br />
part of the shahada, La Ilaha illa Llah (“There is no god but Allah”), or<br />
of God’s name in its many variants such as the pronoun Huwa (“He” in<br />
Arabic), meaning God.This ritual often was an elaborate process that<br />
included a special manner of breathing and affected the Sufi’s physical<br />
state.The zikr was practiced individually or in groups or circles of dervishes,<br />
and it could be vocal (zikr jahri, zikr jali) or silent (zikr khafi).<br />
From among the many Sufi tariqas that have spread all over the Islamic<br />
world, four are especially characteristic of Central Asia: the Qadiriya,<br />
Yasaviya, Kubraviya, and Naqshbandiya.Only one, the first, originated<br />
elsewhere – in Baghdad, where it was founded by Abd al-Qadir Gilani
38 A history of Inner Asia<br />
(d.1166).The other three were founded in Central Asia by Central<br />
Asians – the Yasaviya in Turkestan (which here means territories populated<br />
by Turkic tribes north of the Syr Darya) by the aforementioned<br />
Ahmad Yasavi, a Turk from Sayram (d.1166, thus a contemporary of<br />
Abd al-Qadir Gilani), the Kubraviya in Khwarazm by Najm al-Din<br />
Kubra, a Khwarazmian from Khiva (d.1220), and the Naqshbandiya in<br />
Bukhara by Baha al-Din Naqshband, a Tajik from the nearby village of<br />
Qasr-i Arifan (d.1390).The tombs of these three founders of Sufi orders<br />
subsequently developed into famous shrines and objects of veneration<br />
and pilgrimage of the Muslim faithful spanning the entire spectrum of<br />
society, from rulers and those powerful and wealthy to the common folk,<br />
all bound by similar human craving for a more immediate and recognizable<br />
intercessor.This role ultimately overshadowed their identity as Sufi<br />
mystics and the importance of Sufi tariqas they had founded or inspired<br />
their followers to found.Moreover, these shrines were only the most prestigious<br />
or best known among the myriad other places of pilgrimage and<br />
worship, usually tombs of real or mythical saints whose history often<br />
reached to pre-Islamic times but who all responded to the same psychological<br />
need.The identification of these personages as “saints,” common<br />
in Western perception, needs some qualification.The concept of the<br />
canonical “saint” is absent in orthodox Islam, and is only obliquely<br />
admitted by its heterodox denominations; thus none of the three core<br />
Islamic languages, Arabic, Persian, and Turkish, has a lexical counterpart<br />
to the Christian “saint” applicable to a Muslim.Furthermore, we<br />
repeatedly encounter statements in mainstream Muslim theological literature<br />
that the sharia, Islamic law, does not allow any veneration of holy<br />
men, and that even the men thus revered preached against it.The fact<br />
that such veneration did occur and proliferate only confirms the abovementioned<br />
dictates of human nature, and all orthodox Islam could do<br />
was to prevent the phenomenon from being recognized on the formal<br />
and lexical level.There was no canonization process, but Muslim saints<br />
were admitted – or believed by the masses – to perform karamat, a concept<br />
half-way between miracle and blessing bestowed by God; and in the<br />
absence of a canonical counterpart to the Christian saint, there were<br />
words like wali (Arabic for wali Allah, “he who is close to God”), khwaja,<br />
ishon, baba, ata,orawliya (plural of wali often used in Turkic as a singular)<br />
which assumed that function.In their lifetime, these saints played often<br />
catalytic roles in spreading or affirming Islam in all directions; these roles<br />
acquired a new and special lease of life after the saints’ deaths, when their<br />
tombs became the centers of shrines or mazars. Mazar, derived from the
Introduction 39<br />
Arabic verb zara = to visit, literally means “place of visitation,” and in<br />
the religious context, a shrine to which the faithful perform a ziyara or<br />
local pilgrimage (in contrast to the hajj, pilgrimage to Mecca, which only<br />
a fortunate minority could ever afford).In Central Asia the “cult of<br />
saints” became especially important during the Soviet period, and we<br />
shall return to this subject in the final chapters of our book.<br />
(b) Buddhism<br />
At present, Buddhism is the principal religion in Mongolia.Again, this<br />
is meant in a sociological and historical sense, regardless of how many<br />
Mongols are actually believing and practicing Buddhists.We shall deal<br />
with their conversion in the historical narrative of this book; here we<br />
shall briefly sketch the origin and chief traits of the Buddhist religion.<br />
Like Islam in Arabia, whose founder put a stamp of finality on his<br />
modification of Judaism and Christianity, Buddhism in India appeared<br />
as a development and modification of earlier religions or philosophies.<br />
Some time toward the end of the sixth century BC Buddha (a Sanskrit<br />
word, originally an epithet with the connotation of “The Awakened<br />
One”), dissatisfied with the dominant Brahmanism, kept some of its<br />
tenets but rejected others and created a new spiritual edifice.The continuity<br />
included one of Brahmanism’s fundamental aspects, the doctrine<br />
of the reincarnation or transmigration of souls; the novelty introduced<br />
several concepts whose essential message was the following: this material<br />
world is one of unending suffering, whereas there also exists an ideal<br />
spiritual world whose attainment, nirvana, should be the goal of every<br />
human.This attainment is impeded by worldly passions that condemn<br />
a living creature’s dharmas (constituent elements) to be trapped in a cycle<br />
of rebirths which in turn reflect the creature’s earlier actions.It is<br />
through a total renunciation of passions and desires, the basic causes of<br />
evil, that a human being can hope to have his dharmas escape yet<br />
another reincarnation and attain instead the eternal bliss of nirvana.<br />
Like virtually all the other founders of great religions, the Buddha<br />
himself left no known writings; again as elsewhere, eventually a vertiginously<br />
voluminous theological literature came into being, and<br />
Buddhism itself evolved into a number of sects.Three principal groups,<br />
however, dominate its history: two of these, Hinayana and Mahayana<br />
Buddhism, resulted from a split that occurred in India during the first<br />
century of our era; the third sect, Lamaistic Buddhism, appeared in<br />
Tibet toward the eighth century.One feature especially characteristic of<br />
Buddhism from very early on was monasticism; indeed, the very essence
40 A history of Inner Asia<br />
of the doctrine, liberation from the passions and desires of this world,<br />
fostered monastic withdrawal to a degree unequaled by any other religion.Ideally,<br />
such withdrawal should have been embraced by the entire<br />
human community, an obviously impossible goal; this in turn contributed<br />
to a paradoxical and total inversion of the originally idealistic religion<br />
in Lamaism, where extreme monasticism arrogated to itself the right<br />
to speak also for the lay segment of society, eventually assuming temporal<br />
power and establishing a theocratic state.<br />
In Inner Asia, Buddhism – both its two principal denominations, but<br />
especially the Mahayana form – appeared in the early centuries of our<br />
era.Sinkiang became one of its avenues and intellectual strongholds,<br />
especially the city kingdom of Khotan, but soon also other centers such<br />
as Qocho (Turfan).Later on, however, several major changes occurred.<br />
In India itself, Buddhism was by the twelfth century partly extinct, partly<br />
absorbed into Hinduism, a latter-day form of Brahmanism.In Sinkiang,<br />
Islam drove out Buddhism by the end of the fifteenth century.In<br />
Mongolia, on the other hand, the formerly shamanistic Mongols converted<br />
to Lamaism toward the end of the sixteenth century, and their<br />
kinsmen the Oirats followed suit in the seventeenth.<br />
(c) Shamanism<br />
Shamanism held the place of religion among the hunters and herders of<br />
Inner Asia, thus also among the Turks and Mongols before Islam and<br />
Buddhism substituted themselves for it.The word “shaman” itself is<br />
believed to be of Tungusic origin – the Tungus or Tunguz being several<br />
peoples of eastern Siberia, and the languages they speak forming part<br />
of the Altaic family, as do Turkic and Mongolian.The hesitancy to consider<br />
shamanism a religion stems from the fact that it has never had an<br />
established and codified doctrine, scriptures, or “church,” and that it has<br />
concerned itself little with questions of an afterlife.Its central feature is<br />
the shaman (qam in Turkic languages), a person endowed with special<br />
faculties to communicate with supernatural forces, good and evil spirits<br />
whom he or she can propitiate or manipulate for various goals.Among<br />
these goals, success in hunting held the foremost place; healing was<br />
another important function.The method used by the shaman included<br />
trance or ecstasy, a special psycho-somatic state in which he could communicate<br />
with these spirits and affect their behavior.<br />
The fact that ensuring success in hunting was the foremost task of the<br />
shaman may explain why among the Turks and Mongols of the period<br />
we are dealing with, the system seems to have lost some of its earlier
Introduction 41<br />
vigor, for not hunting but herding had become their principal occupation.On<br />
the one hand, the shamans had to adapt themselves to the more<br />
predictable conditions and rhythms of pastoral life, and on the other,<br />
contacts with neighboring settled regions such as China and Sogdia<br />
allowed some infiltration of religious elements from there.The appearance<br />
of tengri (a word found both in Mongolian and Turkic) as the<br />
supreme deity may have been inspired by the Chinese concept of tian or<br />
heaven.The shaman of Inner Asian pastoralists thus came to include<br />
during his trance a symbolic flight to heaven (a vertical movement, in<br />
contrast to the shaman of strictly hunting societies, whose range of<br />
movement is defined by modern anthropologists as chiefly horizontal).<br />
Turco-Mongol shamanism thus had a somewhat contradictory effect<br />
at the moment of these peoples’ conversion to Islam or Buddhism.On<br />
the one hand, the formlessness of the system facilitated its abandonment<br />
and the nomads’ adoption of a new religion; on the other, the shamans’<br />
charismatic power may have resurfaced in the new garb of Islamic dervishes<br />
and Buddhist lamas.<br />
Nomads and Sedentaries<br />
As we have already emphasized, one of the salient features emerging<br />
from any discussion of Inner Asian anthropology is the fact that until<br />
recently, it was a world of two distinct ways of life: that of the pastoral<br />
nomad, and that of the sedentary agriculturalist or urban dweller.<br />
Moreover, a concomitant feature is the fact that the nomad has in historic<br />
times been mostly Turco-Mongol, whereas the sedentary was either<br />
an Indo-European or else the Turkicized descendant of Indo-<br />
Europeans.<br />
A striking feature of nomadic society was its tribal structure.The tribe<br />
or a confederation of tribes, rather than nationality, territory, or state,<br />
commanded the nomad’s lasting allegiance and sense of identity.The<br />
more immediate loyalty was to the extended family or clan.<br />
Nevertheless, a mostly subconscious awareness of a still broader community,<br />
remotely comparable to that of nationality, did exist among the<br />
nomads: this rested on a combination of several factors, the most important<br />
of which was linguistic.Thus the Kyrgyz, who before 1924 had<br />
never created a state of their own in their present homeland, appear to<br />
have been fully aware of their distinct identity, different from that of<br />
even such close kinsmen as Kazakhs; this identity, cemented by the<br />
common link that was the Kyrgyz form of Turkic, was so strong that it
42 A history of Inner Asia<br />
managed to absorb alien tribal elements that for a variety of reasons<br />
came to live among the Kyrgyz: only the names of some tribes such as<br />
Kalmyk, Nayman, or Kipchak point to their different origins.At the<br />
other extreme, the nucleus of Genghis Khan’s transcontinental empire<br />
was conceived in 1206, when the tribes’ Mongol-speaking elders elected<br />
the incipient conqueror as their leader at the quriltay (assembly of tribal<br />
chieftains) held near the mountain of Burkan Kaldun in the Hentei<br />
range of Mongolia.Even in cases where at first sight the common link<br />
is not language but historical circumstances, as in the case of the Uzbeks<br />
and Kazakhs, a common idiom accompanied such ethnogenesis or<br />
gradually reinforced it.The Uzbeks, steppe nomads who in 1500 swept<br />
down from the Dasht-i Kipchak to conquer Transoxania, were a mosaic<br />
of tribes speaking their own Kipchak form of Turkic, distinct from the<br />
Turki form spoken in the area; this factor as much as tribal and dynastic<br />
politics maintained the Uzbeks’ awareness of their original identity.<br />
Finally, the political formation of the five republics of Central Asia –<br />
Kazakhstan, Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan –<br />
carried out in 1924 on orders dictated by Moscow, was based on an ethnolinguistic<br />
identification in which language played the decisive role.<br />
Pastoralism, as we have said, was the basis of the Inner Asian nomads’<br />
economy.Horses, sheep, camels, cattle, and yaks were the main form of<br />
wealth, the emphasis shifting among these species according to the dictates<br />
of the environment and people’s customs.Horses and sheep played<br />
the central role.The horse rendered a service that went beyond the usual<br />
category of mount and draught animal common among sedentary<br />
peoples, for it was also a source of food, both meat and dairy products.<br />
But it was as the means of the nomad’s mobility that it played the main<br />
historical role.<br />
Mobility was of course the very essence of nomadism, and it involved<br />
a number of characteristic features, both concrete and psychological.<br />
One was the Inner Asian nomad’s universal type of dwelling, a tent<br />
which in English is called yurt (from Russian yurta, a borrowing from<br />
Turkic, where, however, this term means home territory; specific variants<br />
of öy, usually accompanied by color epithets such as aq = white or<br />
boz = grey, are the Turkic terms; significantly, in Turkish – the Turkic of<br />
Turkey – where the bulk of the population has long led a settled life, the<br />
word, in the form of ev, has acquired the connotation of house; the<br />
Mongol word for our “yurt” is ger).The yurt radically differs from other<br />
nomads’ tents – Arab, Berber, those of Iran, the tepee of the American<br />
Indian – both in shape and construction material; the shape is that of a
Introduction 43<br />
round structure covered by a hemispherical or conical roof, with a smoke<br />
hole at the top, which can be closed with a flap; the material consists of<br />
a wooden trellis frame covered with a layer of felt, ideal insulation<br />
against both winter cold and summer heat.The yurt could be larger<br />
or smaller, but a standard size of some 6 meters in diameter was<br />
predominant.<br />
Although the nomads were by definition neither urban dwellers nor<br />
settled tillers of the soil, this did not mean that they ignored towns and<br />
agriculture.There were usually various kinds and degrees of symbiosis<br />
between these contrasting ways of life.For one thing, nomads always<br />
needed some products of sedentary economy, such as grain or artifacts,<br />
and these were acquired at strategically located market places, through<br />
trade, or, sometimes, through raids on settled areas.The peaceful<br />
method, less noticed but more common, thus involved exchange of<br />
products of the northern steppe and forest zones for those of the towns<br />
and settled country.Aside from such kinds of economic symbiosis, we<br />
also hear of cities acquired or built by nomads, even of “capitals” of<br />
nomadic empires.Again, this at first sight contradictory concept could<br />
take on a variety of forms, but one feature deserves to be emphasized:<br />
even when there were impressive cities with palaces and other amenities<br />
for the rulers – Qaraqorum, the capital of the Mongol empire, is the<br />
most famous example – the qaghans (qaghan, or its alternative form khaqan,<br />
or again its contracted form khan, was the highest title of the sovereign<br />
ruler in Turkic and Mongolian) and their retinues only occasionally<br />
stayed there; more often they lived, like their fellow tribesmen, the freer<br />
life of nomads moving about with their herds and using yurts as their<br />
shelters.It is true, though, that at certain periods a tendency toward real<br />
sedentarization did appear; the most striking pre-modern case occurred<br />
in the very same area where five centuries later Genghis Khan’s son<br />
Ögedey founded Qaraqorum: this was Qarabalghasun, the capital of<br />
the eighth–ninth century Uighur empire, in whose countryside the<br />
qaghan’s Turkic subjects were reported to have taken up agriculture and<br />
other trades of settled life.The experiment did not survive the collapse<br />
of that empire, however, and there occurred reverse processes in which<br />
settled and urban areas such as Semireche were turned by the nomads<br />
into pasture lands in the aftermath of the Mongol conquests.<br />
Thus if there were varying kinds and degrees of symbiosis between<br />
Inner Asian nomads and sedentaries, the contrasts may have been even<br />
stronger and were probably affected by psychological factors.The<br />
nomads, although exposed to vagaries of climate that could wreak havoc
44 A history of Inner Asia<br />
among their herds, cherished their freedom from daily drudgery and felt<br />
superior to their peasant neighbors to the south.Aside from herding,<br />
hunting was the nomads’ favorite occupation; this at times took a form<br />
that went well beyond the hunter’s usual goal of acquisition of game for<br />
food, hide, and fur, or even beyond the privileged prince’s favorite<br />
pastime: it could assume a paramilitary dimension, as for example<br />
among the Genghisid Mongols, where, as a unique form of battue, it<br />
became a rigorous and well orchestrated training exercise preparing the<br />
nomads for war (and was known by the technical term nerge).Moreover,<br />
the tribal structure of nomadic society also contained elements analogous<br />
to military organization.Mobility and a paramilitary lifestyle were<br />
thus the chief factors that gave the Turco-Mongol nomads of Inner Asia<br />
the advantage over their sedentary neighbors to the south and west in<br />
pre-modern times.<br />
How much of the nomads’ way of life, of its assets and drawbacks,<br />
still exists today? Some aspects do, but many began to disappear with the<br />
dawn of the modern era, and the rest with the uncompromising exigencies<br />
of the contemporary state, especially the authoritarian one.Herding<br />
as the main source of livelihood still exists in some areas, especially in<br />
Mongolia, but seasonal migration of tribes or families with their herds<br />
has ceased, and efforts are being made to place stock breeding on a more<br />
modern, rational basis, including winter shelters and forage supplies:<br />
these basic but previously shunned measures have begun to prevent the<br />
wholesale losses of livestock caused by a phenomenon called jut in Turkic<br />
(dzut in Mongolian), the re-freezing of the ground after the spring thaw.<br />
The yurt still functions as the most convenient shelter for those individuals<br />
or families who look after the herds.On the other hand, the military<br />
advantage of the nomads over their sedentary neighbors started to<br />
wane as early as the sixteenth century and disappeared in the eighteenth<br />
– a result of the rise of a powerful centralized Russia equipped with<br />
firearms, and of a China that likewise was beginning to use cannon<br />
and to rely on armies, which only a populous, sedentary state could<br />
maintain.<br />
For all practical purposes, the Turks and Mongols of Inner Asia have<br />
now adapted to a sedentary way of life.Their nomadic past, however,<br />
has left such a strong imprint on human memory that most discussions<br />
of their history – and even of their society without reference to a historic<br />
period – focus on that special dimension.And for good reason: customs<br />
and cultural heritage do not change overnight, even if the present-day<br />
scene is the focus of attention.The memory of tribal affiliation and of
Introduction 45<br />
family lineage (every Kazakh, Kyrgyz, or Turkmen – all former nomads<br />
– is still expected to know his ancestors through seven generations)<br />
lingers on, a feature studied by such anthropologists as Abramzon and<br />
Khazanov and vividly described by such novelists as Aitmatov, especially<br />
in his novel The White Ship, and in an article published in a volume of<br />
autobiographies written by Soviet writers.The tribes had little written<br />
literature, but a wealth of oral epics and poems, most of which portray<br />
their turbulent nomadic lifestyle and its triumphs and trials, a source of<br />
pride and inspiration for their modern descendants and a subject of<br />
research for anthropologists and literary historians who have assiduously<br />
studied and recorded this heritage.
chapter one<br />
The beginnings<br />
To most contemporaries, the year 622 must have appeared fairly ordinary.No<br />
great battle or upheaval took place.The principal empires of<br />
the time – Tang China, Sasanian Iran, and Heraclian Byzantium – were<br />
busy building up their strength, recovering from recent confrontations,<br />
or preparing for new ones; and the petty princes of Transoxania were<br />
content in their prosperous though diminutive domains, while recognizing,<br />
when necessary, the suzerainty of the nomadic Turks, whose empire<br />
stretched along a long swath of Inner Asia from China’s northern frontiers<br />
to the Caspian steppes.Meanwhile Sogdian and other merchants<br />
of the Silk Road trade kept criss-crossing Central Asia, as they had done<br />
since antiquity and would continue doing until the end of the Middle<br />
Ages.<br />
China, Iran, and Byzantium were ancient empires with civilizations<br />
and records older than their ruling dynasties.The Turks, on the other<br />
hand, had established their qaghanate only recently, in the middle of the<br />
sixth century, and never raised it above the fragile and ephemeral existence<br />
characteristic of most nomadic empires.Known in modern<br />
historiography as the empire of the Kök Turks or Tu-chüeh or Türk<br />
empire, it lasted from 552 to 744.Its territory stretched along a rather<br />
narrow latitudinal steppe belt interrupted or fringed by mountain chains<br />
dominated by the Altai and Tianshan ranges.The geopolitical peculiarity<br />
of this formation may have played an additional role in the characteristic<br />
tendency of a Turkic state to split up into two branches, a senior<br />
and a junior one.The senior branch of the Ashina dynasty ruling the<br />
Kök Turks lived to the east of the Altai range, with the Orkhon valley of<br />
northwestern Mongolia as its center of gravity; this is why their group is<br />
also called Eastern Turks (or Northern Turks, a confusing concept,<br />
correct only with respect to China).The junior branch ruled in the west,<br />
with the western Tianshan and the region of Semireche as its principal<br />
home; it is thus also known as Western Turks.<br />
46
The beginnings 47<br />
In 622, too, Muhammad, an Arab of the merchant city of Mecca who<br />
had failed to convince his fellow citizens and fellow tribesmen the<br />
Quraysh that God had chosen him as His final prophet (khatam al-anbiya)<br />
in order to convert people to a definitive form of monotheistic faith, left<br />
that city and moved to Yathrib (eventually known as Madinat al-Rasul,<br />
“The Prophet’s City,” or simply Madina, our Medina), an agricultural<br />
oasis some 100 kilometers to the north.Known in Arabic as hijra (usually<br />
spelled hegira in English, and meaning emigration), Muhammad’s move<br />
signaled a radical change in his prophetic mission; for at Medina he not<br />
only succeeded in assembling a community of believers composed of<br />
both those who had come from Mecca to join him and of local converts,<br />
but also in organizing that community along political lines – in short, in<br />
laying the foundations of a theocratic state.Islam, the religion founded<br />
by Muhammad, quickly won great victories both on the spiritual and<br />
temporal level.Not only Mecca but much of the Arabian peninsula was<br />
converted or conquered; and by the time the founder of Islam died in<br />
632, the vigorous young state, directed from Medina by his first successor<br />
(khalifa, hence our caliph) Abu Bakr (632–34), was poised to launch<br />
an unprecedented series of conquests both east and west.Known as jihad<br />
(lit.supreme effort [in the cause of God]), Holy War, it gained under the<br />
second caliph, Umar (634–44), Syria, Egypt, Iraq, and Persia for Islam.<br />
The next major wave of conquests – the last one directed from the center<br />
– occurred during the rule of the first Islamic dynasty, that of the<br />
Umayyads (661–750), which succeeded the four caliphs (Abu Bakr,<br />
Umar, Uthman, and Ali) who had ruled from Medina.Most Umayyad<br />
caliphs resided in Damascus, and by the time their rule had run its<br />
course the Islamic empire comprised Transoxania (Mawarannahr) in<br />
the east and Spain (Andalus) in the west.<br />
If we look again at Central Asia in that crucial year of 622, we find a<br />
multifaceted scenario that can be summarized in the following manner.<br />
Khurasan was a province of Sasanian Iran, with Merv as its chief city.<br />
Beyond the Amu Darya, Transoxania and Sinkiang were mosaics of<br />
petty principalities marked by such centers as Bukhara, Samarkand,<br />
Shash, Khujand, Kashgar, Khotan, Kucha, or Qocho (predecessor of<br />
Turfan); Khwarazm continued to be ruled by the Afrighid<br />
Khawarazmshahs residing in Kath; and the territories farther north and<br />
east, beyond the other river, the Syr Darya, belonged to the western<br />
branch of the Kök Turks, while at the same time a process of agricultural<br />
and urban colonization from the south gave them some of the characteristics<br />
of Transoxania proper.The situation was complex in many
48 A history of Inner Asia<br />
ways: a diversity of ethnic groups, languages, religions, cultures, economies,<br />
political systems, and allegiances.The aforementioned suzerainty<br />
of the Turks over the local dynasts of Transoxania may even have facilitated<br />
this reverse spread of the Sogdian element into the steppe fringes<br />
of the nomadic empire.Sogdian, an Iranian tongue, was the principal<br />
language of Transoxania.Another related language was Khwarazmian;<br />
other languages of the same family are believed to have been spoken to<br />
the east or southeast of there: Khotanese in the western part of<br />
Sinkiang, Bactrian in Tokharistan for example.In contrast to Sogdian<br />
and Khotanese, Khwarazmian and Bactrian have left virtually no<br />
written traces; their further destinies present a curious contrast:<br />
Khwarazm and Khotan gradually became Turkic-speaking areas,<br />
whereas Bactria, as Tokharistan, conserved its Iranian identity but<br />
became “Persianized,” like its Sogdian neighbor to the north.There is<br />
a double irony in this outcome; one is the adoption of the name of the<br />
non-Iranian Tokharians for that of the region, the other the fact that at<br />
the time of the rise of Islam, most rulers of Tokharistan were scions of<br />
Western Turkic dynasties.<br />
As we have said in the introductory chapter, the Iranian idioms<br />
formed part of the eastern group of Indo-European languages called<br />
satem, like the Slavic ones.Tokharian, the language spoken in the eastern<br />
part of Sinkiang, was Indo-European as well, but pertained to the kentum<br />
or western branch of this linguistic family (like Italo-Keltic and<br />
Germanic); it was eventually to give way to victorious Turkic, not unlike<br />
Khwarazmian and Khotanese.Both the Iranian and Tokharian groups<br />
were neighbors of three other major families of languages: Turkic, Sino-<br />
Tibetan, and Indian.Although for the time being eclipsed on the level<br />
of cultural and religious sophistication by its neighbors, Turkic would<br />
gradually prove the most vigorous medium of Inner Asia.In 622 and for<br />
several centuries to come, however, it contented itself with being the<br />
principal idiom of the steppe and mountain belt to the north of<br />
Transoxania and Sinkiang.<br />
Several religions coexisted in Central Asia of that time.An amalgamation<br />
of Zoroastrianism (and in some cases also of Hinduism) with<br />
kindred ancient native beliefs, Manichaeism, Buddhism, Christianity,<br />
and shamanistic cults were close neighbors without the fierce competition<br />
that would soon come with Islam.In Khurasan, Zoroastrianism, a<br />
dualistic religion practicing fire worship and special burial customs,<br />
occupied a dominant position – without, however, eliminating the other<br />
cults; it had sprung into being perhaps as early as 1000 BC in that prov-
The beginnings 49<br />
ince, and was thus the only genuinely Iranian religion among those mentioned<br />
above.Zoroastrianism’s strong position in 622 may have been<br />
partly due to the support it received as the official cult of the Sasanian<br />
dynasty of Iran, which had, as we have seen, incorporated Khurasan<br />
into its empire.Significantly, beyond the Amu Darya and thus outside<br />
the direct control of Sasanian governors, Zoroastrianism had to cede<br />
primacy to other faiths, especially Manichaeism in Transoxania and<br />
Buddhism in Sinkiang.Manichaeism was another dualistic religion<br />
founded by Mani (216–77) in Iraq, then a Persian possession, but subsequently<br />
all but extirpated in territories under Persian or Byzantine rule.<br />
Mani spoke a Semitic tongue related to Syriac, a later form of Aramaic,<br />
the language spoken by Christ.Transoxania and Sinkiang became the<br />
principal home of this religion during the next few centuries, and the<br />
stamp that it left there went beyond the bounds of the spiritual: its Syriac<br />
alphabet was adapted by the Sogdians and was later passed on to the<br />
Turks – among whom it eventually ceded the place to the victorious<br />
Arabic script – and to the Mongols, who used it until 1940.Buddhism<br />
was the third, and with Zoroastrianism the earliest, of the three major<br />
creeds of Central Asia prior to the arrival of Islam.Its presence in<br />
Khurasan and Transoxania was only marginal, but in Afghanistan and<br />
Sinkiang it became the dominant religion: Balkh, Khotan, and Qocho<br />
were the foremost among Buddhist centers.The devoutness of the king<br />
of Qocho is vividly described by the Chinese pilgrim Hsüan Tsang<br />
(600–64) who passed through it in 629.Sanskrit and its derivatives and<br />
alphabets such as Brahmi, as well as another script named Kharoshti<br />
and derived, like the Sogdian one, from Syriac, came with this religion<br />
from northwestern India, but despite initial vigor these writing systems<br />
gradually gave way to the Manichaean Sogdians’ Syriac script.<br />
Christianity too arrived early in Central Asia: Merv was the seat of a<br />
bishopric by the fourth century, and the religion spread in its Nestorian<br />
form throughout the area under discussion.Alongside its own sharp<br />
individuality, this denomination had certain features in common with<br />
Manichaeism: Syriac liturgical language and script in particular.<br />
Christianity never managed to gain a leading position in Inner Asia, but<br />
it later played an at times significant role among the elite of the otherwise<br />
shamanistic Turks and Mongols.<br />
This, then, was the general situation in 622.Meanwhile the birth of<br />
Islam in distant Arabia signified more than just another religion that<br />
would soon join those existing in Inner Asia.It meant a new and uncompromising<br />
way of life, both spiritual and temporal, wherever Muslim
50 A history of Inner Asia<br />
armies or missionaries could successfully penetrate.In Khurasan,<br />
Transoxania, and Khwarazm Islam was victorious by the time the<br />
second major Islamic dynasty, that of the Abbasids, came to power in<br />
750.Farther north and east the process took longer, and the wave never<br />
reached Mongolia.But this exception alone illustrates the phenomenal<br />
dynamism of Islam, and the seminal role it played in the history of Inner<br />
Asia.
chapter two<br />
The Kök Turks, the Chinese expansion, and the Arab<br />
conquest<br />
In 622, as we have said, the steppe empire of the Kök Turks stretched<br />
from Mongolia to Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan, with the valleys of the<br />
Orkhon and Chu representing the cores of its eastern and western<br />
wings.At both ends the Turks had lively relations with great sedentary<br />
empires and civilizations to the south.In the east, China was the immediate<br />
neighbor; in the west, Sasanian Iran.<br />
There was one significant diference, however: the buffer zone represented<br />
by Transoxania.Its Sogdian princes recognized the suzerainty of<br />
the Turkic qaghans ever since their earlier overlords, the Hephtalite<br />
kings of Afghanistan, were defeated by a Turko-Persian coalition in the<br />
first half of the 560s.Khurasan, also a Hephtalite possession, fell to Iran,<br />
and the two empires were thus separated only by the Amu Darya.The<br />
sedentary Sogdian inhabitants of Transoxania endeavored to foster<br />
peaceful, especially mercantile contacts with all their neighbors, and<br />
were content to recognize, as we have said, the suzerainty of the Turkic<br />
qaghans.Above all, the Persians made only rare and unsuccessful<br />
attempts to penetrate Transoxania, and never the home ground of the<br />
Turks in the steppes, in contrast to Chinese diplomacy and military campaigns.A<br />
dramatic illustration of the latter is provided by the attacks<br />
mounted by the Tang emperor Tai-tsung (600–49; ruled from 627) in<br />
630, and by the reduction, over the next fifty years, of the Kök Turkic<br />
empire’s eastern wing to the position of a Chinese vassal.<br />
Moreover, the Chinese also carried out a successful conquest of<br />
Sinkiang, with the city of Kashgar as its western metropolis.This conquest<br />
proved more lasting and deliberate than that of the Turkic territories,<br />
possibly because it covered settled areas and was thus both more<br />
feasible and more tempting.It also made China the immediate neighbor<br />
of Transoxania and Semireche.This led to complex relationships: on<br />
the political level, some of the petty monarchs recognized nominal<br />
Chinese suzerainty, hoping to share the Middle Kingdom’s prestige and<br />
51
To the Arctic Ocean<br />
Kök Turkic Empire<br />
(ca. 622)<br />
Volga R.<br />
Angara R.<br />
L.<br />
Baikal<br />
Yenisei R.<br />
Irtysh R.<br />
Loyang<br />
Changan<br />
TANG<br />
CHINA<br />
western branch<br />
Turfan<br />
Khotan<br />
Hami<br />
Orkhon<br />
River<br />
eastern (main)<br />
Aral<br />
branch<br />
Sea<br />
Talas<br />
Bukhara Samarkand<br />
Kucha<br />
Tunhuang<br />
T a r i m<br />
Ctesiphon<br />
Kashgar<br />
Bactra<br />
B a s i n<br />
SASANIAN<br />
EMPIRE<br />
Constantinople<br />
Black<br />
Sea<br />
BYZANTINE<br />
EMPIRE<br />
Huang-Ho<br />
C a s pian S e a<br />
Yang-tse<br />
Medina<br />
Persian<br />
Gulf<br />
Mecca<br />
ARABIA<br />
INDIA<br />
Indian<br />
Ocean<br />
Map 2 Kök Turkic Empire, ca.622
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 53<br />
gain an advantage over their rivals; on the economic level, the Silk Road<br />
trade gained further from governmental participation, and no doubt<br />
contributed to the fame and quantity of Chinese luxury wares appearing<br />
in the area, and to the development of the famous breed of Fergana<br />
horses sent to China.<br />
The new masters organized Sinkiang in a manner that left its existing<br />
structures intact and allowed it to retain its individuality, its way of life,<br />
and its local government.The area, which the Chinese called Anshi<br />
(“The Pacified West”), was divided into several (usually four or five)<br />
administrative regions, and military garrisons were posted at strategic<br />
locations; the native monarchs kept their thrones and only had to recognize<br />
the authority of the principal governor, who resided at Kucha.<br />
With the Kök Turks of Mongolia it was a different story.Some of the<br />
nomads succumbed to the lure of China’s sophisticated civilization, but<br />
others launched a liberation movement.By 680 they had regained independence<br />
and restored their empire, also bringing the western wing<br />
under their sway.Within one generation, in the early years of the eighth<br />
century, the Kök Turks undertook military campaigns still farther west<br />
and south into Transoxania and even beyond the Amu Darya into<br />
Afghanistan’s Tokharistan region.Then in the 720s and 730s several<br />
members of the ruling family and the elite recorded through a series of<br />
inscriptions the story of their people’s and dynasty’s early history, their<br />
subsequent humiliation under Chinese rule, the dramatic liberation, and<br />
the great conquests to the east and west.The principal inscriptions were<br />
carved on funerary steles found near the River Orkhon in northwestern<br />
Mongolia, hence the name they have received in modern scholarly literature,<br />
“Orkhon inscriptions.” The tombs by which the steles stood have<br />
long disappeared, but we can infer from the texts themselves that they<br />
must have been remarkable examples of funerary art, and that not only<br />
the Turks themselves but also Chinese craftsmen and artists collaborated<br />
in their creation.But it is the language of the texts, the alphabet in which<br />
they are written, and the epic, poetic beauty of the principal ones that<br />
have placed them among the great monuments of mankind’s cultural<br />
heritage.The texts have been a treasure trove for philologists studying<br />
the history of the Turkic languages.The alphabet at first sight, and even<br />
on closer inspection, appears completely original and traceable to still<br />
older Turkic tamghas or symbols found at archaeological sites and probably<br />
having a magical or proprietary function.This is why its decipherment<br />
at first seemed all but impossible, until the Danish scholar Vilhelm<br />
Thomsen (1842–1927) broke the code and published the first translation
54 A history of Inner Asia<br />
of these inscriptions.The near-perfection with which this alphabet<br />
reproduces the Turkic phonetic structure is admirable, and it at first<br />
appeared to suggest an independent origin of this script.Eventually,<br />
however, a link was established between it and the Syriac scripts of the<br />
Near East, passed on to the Turks of Semireche and farther east by way<br />
of the trade routes and probably through the mediation of Sogdian merchants.The<br />
Turks, however, so radically modified and adapted its letters<br />
to the needs of the Turkic phonetical structure that considering this<br />
script their own original creation is not a far-fetched proposition.The<br />
best examples are the inscription of 726 by the minister Toñuquq, and<br />
those engraved on steles erected a few years later and known as the<br />
inscriptions of the qaghan Bilgä Qaghan and the prince (tegin) Kül<br />
Tegin.The interest of these inscriptions was further heightened when in<br />
the 1950s Czech archaeologists unearthed a statue that may be a portrait<br />
of Prince Kül himself.<br />
The best-preserved inscription, authored by Bilgä Qaghan but known<br />
as the Kül Tegin Inscription, opens with a universal theme, the creation<br />
of the world, but then it immediately focuses on the Turks’ past: 1<br />
When the blue sky above and the dark earth below were created, human beings<br />
were created between the two.My ancestors Bumin Qaghan and Istämi<br />
Qaghan rose above the sons of men.Having become their masters, they governed<br />
and established the empire and the institutions of the Turkic people.<br />
They had many enemies in the four corners of the world, but waging military<br />
campaigns, they subjugated and pacified them, making them bow their heads<br />
and bend their knees.They pushed eastward to the Forest of Qadirkhan, and<br />
westward to the Iron Gate: the realm of the Kök Turks reached this far.They<br />
were wise qaghans, they were brave qaghans; their officers were wise, brave, all<br />
their nobles as well as common people were just<br />
The passage is referring to events shortly after the formation of the<br />
early Kök Turkic empire by the qaghans Bumin (552–53) and his son<br />
Muqan (553–72) and brother Istämi (553–75), respectively qaghans of<br />
the eastern and western wing.The above-mentioned interlude of<br />
Chinese domination of the eastern wing (630–80) came to an end with<br />
what we might call “wars of liberation” led by a member of the royal<br />
Ashina clan who then became qaghan as Iltärish (Unifier, collector [of<br />
people], 682–92); the narrative of the “Chinese interlude,” of Iltärish’s<br />
campaigns, and of the conquests realized by his successors is the most<br />
1 Kül Tegin stele, East 1–4; T.Tekin, A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (Bloomington, 1968), pp.232<br />
(Turkic text), 263–64 (English translation; D.Sinor, “The Establishment and Dissolution of the<br />
Türk Empire,” in The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (henceforth CHEIA), p.297 (English<br />
translation).
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 55<br />
dramatic component of the three inscriptions.Here are two examples;<br />
first, the interlude of Chinese domination: 2<br />
Younger brothers were unlike their elder brothers, sons were unlike their<br />
fathers, qaghans unwise and incompetent succeeded on the throne, unwise and<br />
incompetent were their officials.Because of discord between the nobles and the<br />
commoners, because of the cunning and deceitfulness of the Chinese who set<br />
younger and elder brothers, nobles and commoners against each other, the<br />
Türk people caused the disintegration of the empire that had been their own,<br />
caused the ruin of the qaghan who had been their qaghan.The sons of the<br />
nobles became slaves of the Chinese, their ladylike daughters, maidservants.<br />
The Turk nobles gave up their native offices, accepted Chinese titles and ranks,<br />
submitted to the Chinese emperor, and for fifty years they offered him their<br />
labor and their strength<br />
The following passage tells about the liberation and subsequent conquests:<br />
3<br />
My father the qaghan set out with seventeen men, and as the word spread that<br />
he had set out and was advancing, those who were in the plains went up into<br />
the mountains and those who were in the mountains came down; they gathered,<br />
and there were seventy-seven men.Because Heaven gave them strength, the<br />
army of my father was like wolves and their enemies were like sheep.Leading<br />
campaigns to the east and to the west, my father gathered the people and made<br />
them rise.And all together they numbered seven hundred men.When they<br />
were seven hundred, my father, in accordance with the institutions of our ancestors,<br />
organized those who had been deprived of a qaghan, who had become<br />
slaves and servants, who had abandoned their institutions....He led fortyseven<br />
campaigns and fought in twenty battles.By the grace of Heaven he<br />
deprived of their state those who had a state, he deprived of their qaghan those<br />
who had a qaghan, he subjugated his enemies and made them bend their knees<br />
and bow their heads<br />
The inscription thus relates, among other things, the immense rhythm<br />
and sweep of the Turks’ campaigns eastward all the way to Manchuria<br />
and westward to Transoxania and Tokharistan.<br />
Meanwhile Sinkiang and Transoxania continued to display their<br />
special individuality, with the difference that the former came under<br />
Chinese suzerainty while the latter remained a kaleidoscope of more or<br />
less independent principalities, Iranian languages, and religions,<br />
although a vague kind of Turkic suzerainty – perhaps rather an intermittent<br />
series of pragmatic political submissions – bound the local monarchs<br />
to the qaghans.Yet before long both areas would enter a process<br />
2 Kül Tegin stele, East 5–8; Tekin, Grammar, pp.232–33 and 264; Sinor, “Eastablishment,” p.310.<br />
3 Kül Tegin stele, East 11–15; Tekin, Grammar, pp.233–34 and 265–66; Sinor, “Establishment,”<br />
p.311.
56 A history of Inner Asia<br />
that eventually transformed them into fairly monolithic societies whose<br />
principal language was to be Turkic, and principal religion, Islam.The<br />
process was complex and displayed a variety of forms and patterns of<br />
progress or quiescence, but there were two decisive and related aspects.<br />
One was the inspired dynamism of the Islamic religion that ignited the<br />
drive of Muslim armies, initially led by the Arabs, then by the Iranians,<br />
and ultimately by the Turkic converts themselves; the other was the military<br />
dynamism of the nomads, by then mostly Turks, who only needed<br />
an additional trigger to move in the opposite, southwesterly direction,<br />
and start the second part of the aforementioned process of<br />
Turkicization.Here we would point to a certain analogy between the<br />
Arab hosts inspired by their new creed, and the Turkic ones driven by<br />
their paramilitary way of life; between the inspired force of the Islamic<br />
holy book, and the poetic beauty of the Orkhon inscriptions relating the<br />
military campaigns east and west.Neither of these dimensions existed<br />
among the sedentary populations of the area.Significantly, the two giant<br />
neighbors to the southeast and northwest – China and, a millennium<br />
later, Russia – would remain unable to change the effects of the two catalytic<br />
factors – Islamization and Turkicization – despite their recurrent<br />
or eventual domination of the area.<br />
the arab conquest<br />
The Arabs entered Central Asia after their rapid conquest of Persia,<br />
whose last Sasanian ruler, Yazdgird III, fled before the advancing<br />
Muslims to Khurasan and was killed near Merv by the province’s<br />
marzban (warden of the marches), Mahuyi, in 651.Khurasan then<br />
became for several decades the northeasternmost segment of the Islamic<br />
empire, with Merv as the governor’s residence.<br />
Compared with the conquest of the Sasanian empire of Persia (which<br />
took at most twenty years, from the battle of Qadisiya near the<br />
Euphrates in 635 to the establishment of Arab rule in Merv during the<br />
650s), that of Transoxania proved to be a laborious and protracted affair.<br />
The Arabs needed here almost a full century to bring the province<br />
beyond the river firmly into the Islamic fold.The explanation has been<br />
sought by some in the structural difference between the Iranian polities<br />
of Persia and Central Asia.The former was a monolithic state ruled by<br />
an imperial center; once this center fell, the whole empire surrendered<br />
to the conqueror, whereas the latter, a mosaic of principalities, could not<br />
be felled by a single blow (while this argument, proposed by R.Frye in<br />
his Heritage of Central Asia, sounds convincing, its validity should be pro-
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 57<br />
jected against the fact that by the time the Arabs launched their conquests,<br />
the Sasanian empire had long passed its prime and the dynasty<br />
had lost its erstwhile vigor; had the confrontation occurred at an earlier<br />
time, the centralization that became the kingdom’s liability could have<br />
proved its strength and the outcome might have been different).There<br />
were other contributing factors, such as the political, psychological, and<br />
geostrategic ones.Khurasan was a Sasanian satrapy, and its conquest<br />
meant the completion of the conquest of the Persian empire.At about<br />
the same time Egypt had been conquered from the Byzantines (642),<br />
and the caliphs, still residing in Medina, were faced with unprecedented<br />
challenges of organizing their young empire.Finally the River Oxus,<br />
although by no means impassable, acted both as a psychological and<br />
strategic frontier.Significantly, the Persian empire, whether under the<br />
Sasanians or under their predecessors, had more often extended its possessions<br />
to the east of Khurasan, thus to the territories of southern<br />
Tokharistan, than beyond the Oxus into Transoxania proper.<br />
The sundry sovereigns who ruled their petty principalities in<br />
Transoxania presented a sharp contrast to the sublime kings of kings of<br />
Persia.They sported various titles, mostly of Iranian etymology, but it<br />
seems that they were little more than primi inter pares, their peers being<br />
the landowning gentry known as dihqans. Moreover, being a landowner<br />
was not the sole title to distinction.Wealthy merchants of Sogdian cities<br />
stood only a notch below the local nobility.<br />
For over half a century after their establishment in Khurasan, the<br />
Arab governors undertook forays into the “territories beyond the river”<br />
without any apparent plan to extend the frontiers of the Dar al-Islam in<br />
that direction.Their recompense was booty, which has led some historians<br />
to downplay the role of Islam in the conquest of Central Asia.<br />
Once the conquest was undertaken in earnest by Qutayba ibn Muslim,<br />
however, implanting the new religion was an inseparable component of<br />
the expansion.<br />
Qutayba ibn Muslim was an Arab of the Bahila tribe, whose<br />
members shunned the endemic internecine strife of Arab tribes in the<br />
newly conquered territories such as Khurasan.This may have contributed<br />
to his choice, by the famous viceroy of Iraq al-Hajjaj, as governor<br />
of Khurasan.The viceroy and his deputy were staunchly supported by<br />
the caliph al-Walid, and for a decade, between 705 and 715, Qutayba<br />
set about laying the foundations of an Islamic Transoxania and<br />
Khwarazm through a series of dramatic and often heroic campaigns<br />
retold in fascinating (and no doubt often considerably embellished)<br />
detail by Arab historians.Bukhara, the closest major principality to
58 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Khurasan, was Qutayba’s first target.The approach from Merv leads<br />
through the desert straddling the Oxus, with the crossing point at Amul;<br />
about half-way between the river and Bukhara lay Baykand, a renowned<br />
city of merchants wealthy from the Silk Road trade with China.<br />
Qutayba captured it in 706 and withdrew to Merv; a revolt provoked his<br />
swift return and exemplary punishment of the rebels, but an attempt to<br />
take the principality’s capital succeeded only in 709.The Bukharans<br />
were no strangers to dealing with the Arabs by then.The current ruler’s<br />
mother, known from Islamic histories only by her title Khatun, managed<br />
to retain independence through tribute repeatedly sent to the governors<br />
in Merv.This time, however, tribute was not enough, no doubt because<br />
Qutayba had vaster plans for Transoxania.Nevertheless, he did not<br />
relinquish forthwith the method of letting a local sovereign keep his post,<br />
on the strict conditions of obedience and payment of tribute.Thus<br />
Tughshada, Khatun’s son, continued as Bukhar-khudat, khuda or khudat<br />
being one of the princely titles in Iranian Central Asia. The capital of<br />
Sogdia proper, Samarkand, at first seemed to repeat the success of<br />
Bukhara’s Khatun, for its king, Tarkhun, paid Qutayba off with a tribute<br />
and hostages.Eventually, however, Tarkhun paid for the peace with his<br />
life, because a faction opposing the agreement killed him and installed<br />
its leader, Ghurak, as the king of Samarkand.This led to a full-scale conquest<br />
of that city, but not immediately, for Qutayba had to mount campaigns<br />
at two other poles of Central Asia, Tokharistan and Khwarazm.<br />
The former province had already come under some degree of Arab<br />
control, but was racked by revolts and required Qutayba’s personal<br />
interventions to be pacified.These events occurred in 710 or 711, and<br />
on the second occasion the Arab commander returned from Balkh via<br />
Tirmidh and the “Iron Gate” to Bukhara and Merv.By then his attention<br />
had turned toward Khwarazm, whose sovereign was inviting him to<br />
intervene on his behalf: the Khwarazmshah had indeed sent a message<br />
complaining about his younger brother Khurrazad, who despite his<br />
junior status was terrorizing him and the whole kingdom.Qutayba ibn<br />
Muslim seems to have received this message just as he was preparing for<br />
a campaign against Samarkand.He swerved with his army toward<br />
Khwarazm, and took control of the kingdom without a fight except for<br />
a punitive expedition entrusted to his brother Abd al-Rahman ibn<br />
Muslim, who apparently seized Khurrazad with 4,000 men.Qutayba,<br />
who waited in the “capital” – presumably Kath – delivered Khurrazad<br />
to the Khwarazmshah, who killed his brother, while Qutayba had the<br />
prisoners executed (possibly at the request of the Khwarazmshah).As in
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 59<br />
Bukhara, here too the Arab viceroy allowed the local sovereign to retain<br />
his throne, under the supervision of an Arab governor.The first governor,<br />
Iyas ibn Abdallah, did not prove equal to the task, and could not<br />
prevent a revolt in which the Khwarazmians killed the vassal king.<br />
Curiously, the rebels attacked the Khwarazmshah but not the Arabs,<br />
and the action may indeed not have been meant to reject Arab suzerainty.This<br />
did not save them from a terrible retribution.After a<br />
“holding action” under another of Qutayba’s brothers, Abdallah ibn<br />
Muslim, an Arab army, triumphant after the conquest of Samarkand,<br />
carried out a reconquest which included a slaughter of most of the<br />
upper classes and destruction of much cultural heritage of the province.<br />
Samarkand’s turn came on the heels of the first Khwarazmian campaign,<br />
thus still in 712.By all counts, Qutayba should have been<br />
expected to return to Merv, and he exploited this stratagem to catch the<br />
Sogdians unprepared.One of our main sources for this period of<br />
Islamic history is the great chronicler Tabari (d. 923), and it may be<br />
worthwhile to let him narrate the salient events:<br />
Qutayba reached Sughd ...with twenty thousand men.He reached it accompanied<br />
by Khwarazmians and Bukharans ...and said: “When we light on a<br />
people’s courtyard, how evil will be the morning of them that are warned!” He<br />
besieged them for a month.In the course of being besieged, [the Sogdians]<br />
fought [the Muslims] several times.They wrote to the king of Shash and the<br />
ikhshad of Fergana: “If the Arabs vanquish us, they will visit upon you the like<br />
of what they brought us!” [The latter] agreed to set out [against the Arabs] and<br />
sent [word] to [the Sogdians]: “Send [against the Arabs] those who may distract<br />
them, so that we may make a night attack on their camp!” 4<br />
The author then narrates how Qutayba had been apprised through<br />
his spies of the planned attack, and how the Arabs had thwarted it<br />
through a stratagem but also thanks to their fighting valor; admiration<br />
was expressed for that of the enemy as well.According to a participant,<br />
I was present, and I have never seen people fighting more strongly or with more<br />
fortitude in adversity than the sons of those kings; only a few of them fled.We<br />
gathered their weapons, cut off their heads, and took prisoners.We asked them<br />
about those whom we had killed, and they said: “You have killed none other<br />
than a son of a king, or one of the nobles, or one of the heroes.You have killed<br />
men the equal of a hundred men.” In those cases we wrote [their names] on<br />
their ears.Then we entered the camp in the morning, and there was not a single<br />
4 Tarikh, published as Annales, ed.De Goeje, series 2, vol.II, pp.1243–53 (Arabic text); a cooperative<br />
translation project currently published as The History of al-Tabari (passages pertaining to this<br />
subject in vol.XXIII, pp.191–201, by M.Hinds).
60 A history of Inner Asia<br />
man among us who did not hang up a head known by name.We took as plunder<br />
excellent weapons, fine goods, and brisk riding beasts, and Qutaybah let us have<br />
all that as personal booty.<br />
The victory broke the Sogdians’ capability of facing the Arabs in the<br />
open field, and the rest of the campaign consisted of the siege of the city.<br />
Qutayba was unstintingly assisted and advised by Bukharan and<br />
Khwarazmian auxiliaries, which provoked a taunt from Ghurak that<br />
touched the Arab commander’s raw nerve:<br />
Ghurak sent [word] to [Qutayba]: “You are fighting me with my brothers and<br />
family from [among] the non-Arabs.Send Arabs out to me!” Qutayba became<br />
angry, summoned al-Jadali, and said: “Review the [army] and pick out the<br />
bravest people!” [al-Jadali did so, and] Qutayba took them forward and fought<br />
[the enemy] with them, [using both] cavalry and infantrymen.He bombarded<br />
the city with mangonels, and made a breach which [the defenders] blocked with<br />
sacks of millet.There emerged a man who stood on top of the rampart [lit.<br />
breach] and shouted abuse at Qutaybah.The latter said to the archers who<br />
were with him: “Choose two of your number!” and they did so.Qutayba said:<br />
“Whichever of the two of you will shoot at this man, if he hits him, he will<br />
receive ten thousand [dirhams], but if he misses, his hand will be cut off.” One<br />
of the two held back, but the other came forward and shot [the man on the<br />
rampart], right in the eye.Qutayba ordered that he be given ten thousand<br />
dirhams.<br />
Tabari then relates how the Arabs pressed on, expanding the breach,<br />
and finally the infidels sued for peace.Qutayba made peace with them<br />
the next day, on the condition of delivery of the following assets: (1) a<br />
sum of 2,200,000 dirhams; (2) 30,000 slaves free of defect and including<br />
neither young boys nor old men; (3) they would clear the city for<br />
Qutayba, and would not have in it any fighting men; and (4) a mosque<br />
would be built in Samarkand for Qutayba, for him to enter and pray,<br />
and a pulpit (minbar) would be set up there, from which he might preach<br />
a sermon.The peace treaty was implicitly made with Ghurak, who even<br />
kept an undefined role in the resulting arrangement.The transformation<br />
of the idolatrous Sogdian city into an Islamic stronghold was,<br />
however, emphatic.This is how Tabari narrates it:<br />
[Qutayba] was brought the idols, which were despoiled and then placed before<br />
him; amassed, they were like an enormous edifice.He ordered that they be<br />
burned, and the non-Arabs said to him: “Among them are idols the burner of<br />
which will be destroyed!” Qutayba said: “I shall burn them with my own hand!”<br />
Ghurak came, knelt before him, and said: “Devotion to you is a duty incumbent<br />
upon me.Do not harm these idols!” Qutayba called for fire, took a brand in his
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 61<br />
hand, stepped forward, proclaimed “God is great!,” set fire to them, and they<br />
burned fiercely.In the remains of the gold and silver nails that had been in<br />
them, they found fifty thousand mithqals.<br />
Qutayba finally returned to Merv, and here is what Tabari tells us<br />
about the final measures he took before leaving Samarkand:<br />
Then Qutayba set off, returning to Merv.He deputed [his brother] Abdallah<br />
ibn Muslim over Samarkand, and left with him massive [numbers of] troops and<br />
much war matériel, saying to him: “Do not let a [non-resident] polytheist<br />
(mushrik) enter any of Samarkand’s gates without having a seal on his hand.If<br />
the clay has dried before he goes out, kill him! If you find on him a piece of iron,<br />
or a knife, or anything else, kill him! If you close the gate at night and find any<br />
one of them inside, kill him!”<br />
Qutayba ibn Muslim can thus rightly be considered the founder or consolidator<br />
of Arab and Islamic power in three crucial segments of Central<br />
Asia: Tokharistan, Sogdia, and Khwarazm.He was in his early fifties at<br />
the time of the abovementioned campaigns, thus still in the active phase<br />
of his life, and seemed ready to undertake new ones into Turkestan of<br />
that time, the territories beyond the Syr Darya toward Shash (Tashkent).<br />
All that was thwarted by events which took place in the Arab homeland,<br />
first in Iraq and then at the center of the empire in Damascus.Qutayba’s<br />
powerful sponsor, the governor of Iraq (in fact, the viceroy of the entire<br />
Islamic east) Hajjaj, died in Kufa, and then the caliph Walid died in<br />
Damascus.The throne passed to Walid’s brother Sulayman (715–17),<br />
who was hostile to Qutayba (because the latter had supported the candidacy<br />
of another member of the Umayyad family for the caliphate),<br />
and promptly dismissed him from the governorship of Khurasan.<br />
Qutayba tried to challenge the new caliph’s authority and carry on independently,<br />
but found no support among the Muslim troops and was<br />
killed, still in 715, in Fergana.<br />
Qutayba’s campaigns coincided with the last and most impressive<br />
stage of Kök Turkic power in Inner Asia.The expeditionary forces of<br />
the qaghan invaded Sogdia several times between 689 and 712.In one<br />
of the versions of the war between the Arabs and the Sogdians, Tabari<br />
states that Ghurak also wrote the “Turkish khaqan” requesting help.It<br />
seems that the Eastern Turks were chiefly eager to bring under control<br />
their junior partners the Western Turks, but the mention on the Kül<br />
Tegin inscription that “Together with my uncle, the qaghan, we went on<br />
campaigns ...westward as far as the Iron Gate” 5 – a campaign that<br />
5 Kül Tegin stele, E18; Tekin, Grammar, pp.234 (Turkic text) and 266 (English translation).
62 A history of Inner Asia<br />
would have skirted Samarkand – may indeed have been connected with<br />
such appeals.<br />
Qutayba’s death put a halt to the Muslim expansion in Central Asia.<br />
When the jihad was resumed over a century later, its leaders were no<br />
longer the Arabs but the Ajam (a term often translated as “non-Arabs”<br />
but which really meant Iranians, both before and after their conversion),<br />
and its chief target was the lands beyond the other river, the Syr Darya.<br />
The halt coincided with growing tensions in the senior province of<br />
Khurasan, whose accounts may however also obscure the daunting challenge<br />
of consolidating Islamic rule in Transoxania.The tensions<br />
stemmed from a variety of factors, such as inter-tribal Arab rivalry (often<br />
pitting the tribes of the Arabian south, lumped together under the name<br />
of Kalb, against those of the north, called Qays), rebellions of local<br />
commanders, and frequent apostasies of those Central Asian chieftains<br />
who had converted to Islam when the turbulence seemed to offer them<br />
a chance to promote their own interests.The last-named feature was a<br />
symptom of a ferment on the popular level which caused a number of<br />
uprisings, mostly cloaked in sectarian religious garb but which often had<br />
deeper socio-economic as well as spiritual roots.<br />
Toward the middle of the eighth century, Khurasan became the<br />
staging area for a movement that eventually toppled the Umayyad<br />
dynasty and replaced it with the Abbasids, who then founded a new<br />
capital, Baghdad.The ostensible justification for the “Abbasid revolution”<br />
was a desire of the umma, the Muslim community, to be ruled by<br />
caliphs who belonged to the Prophet’s family, the concomitant assumption<br />
being that they would more assiduously carry out the precepts of<br />
Islam.This of course became the main theme of the Shii movements,<br />
but it appears that in the early period direct descent through Ali and<br />
Fatima was not absolutely indispensable.Other affiliations were staking<br />
out their claims, and one of these was that of the Hashimiya.This<br />
party’s dynastic candidates traced their eponym to al-Abbas, an uncle of<br />
the Prophet, whose fourth generation descendants al-Saffah and al-<br />
Mansur were the first Abbasid caliphs.The epithet of Hashimis had two<br />
interpretations.One was the name of Hashim ibn Abd al-Manaf, the<br />
father of Abd al-Muttalib and grandfather of al-Abbas; his name could<br />
thus serve as proof of membership in the Prophet’s family, for Abd al-<br />
Muttalib was Muhammad’s grandfather.In this case, however, the<br />
common ancestry could be brought one generation closer to the<br />
Prophet, and the question could be asked why not Abd al-Muttalib but<br />
Hashim became the party’s eponym.The explanation can be found in
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 63<br />
the name of another Hashim, Abu Hashim Abdallah.This Hashim was<br />
a grandson of the Prophet’s son-in law and cousin Ali; his father<br />
Muhammad’s mother, however, was not the Prophet’s daughter Fatima<br />
(in contrast to Hasan and Husayn), but another woman called al-<br />
Hanafiya, hence the standard form by which he is known, Muhammad<br />
ibn al-Hanafiya.This line ended with Abu Hashim Abdallah, who died<br />
childless in 716.In the proliferation of Shii groups opposing the<br />
Umayyad dynasty, the one propounding the candidacy of Muhammad<br />
ibn al-Hanafiya had become especially active, and by the time the latter’s<br />
son came to the fore as the possible imam, a special theory had been<br />
elaborated – that of the transferability of the imamate to the person of<br />
the existing imam’s choice.As he lay on his deathbed, Abu Hashim is<br />
said to have bequeathed the imamate to Muhammad ibn Ali, a greatgrandson<br />
of al-Abbas.The bequest, wasiya, was said to have occurred<br />
near Humayma (a town in southern Jordan between Maan and Petra),<br />
the residence of the Abbasid family.From then on the Shii party of the<br />
Abbasids methodically organized political propaganda aimed at subverting<br />
Umayyad rule and preparing the ground for an eventual takeover.Humayma<br />
remained for a time its brain center, but soon the<br />
garrison town of Kufa in Iraq became the headquarters, and eventually<br />
Khurasan the staging area, for armed uprising and military operations.<br />
The critical years were 742–49, when the campaign was directed by the<br />
Abbasid Ibrahim, although still from Humayma.It was he who in 745<br />
invested his mawla (freedman) Abu Muslim with the mission to organize<br />
a campaign in Khurasan.The choice of both Abu Muslim and<br />
Khurasan was significant.The Muslim community of this frontier province<br />
included many mawali, freedmen of mostly Persian origin (such as<br />
Abu Muslim himself), ready to join dissident movements that promised<br />
greater equality preached by egalitarian Islam.A great source of dissatisfaction<br />
was the fact that the Umayyad authorities as a rule continued<br />
to impose the jizya, poll tax applicable according to Islamic law only<br />
to non-Muslim subjects of the caliph, also on those who had converted<br />
and thus should have been exempted from it.At the same time, Arab<br />
garrisons and settlers, irked by certain policies pursued by Umayyad<br />
governors and racked by internal rivalries between such groups as<br />
Kalbites (Yemenites) and Qaysites, were ready to support the dynasty’s<br />
overthrow.Abu Muslim thus found ample response in Khurasan, and by<br />
747 the heretofore secret campaign openly challenged the Umayyads.<br />
Abu Muslim displayed a true genius at organizing the political side of<br />
the uprising, while Ibrahim again demonstrated good judgment by
64 A history of Inner Asia<br />
appointing the Arab Qahtaba as leader of the military operations.The<br />
last Umayyad governor, Nasr ibn al-Sayyar, was by 748 ousted from<br />
Merv where Abu Muslim appointed the Yemenite Ali ibn al-Karmani<br />
as the first Abbasid governor of Khurasan.In contrast to the<br />
effectiveness of the Abbasid movement, the Umayyad caliphs in<br />
Damascus acted late and ineffectually.It was only after Qahtaba had<br />
started his march from Khurasan toward Iraq in 749, that Marwan II<br />
had Ibrahim arrested in Humayma and brought to Syria, where the<br />
latter died in August, either killed or victim of plague.Meanwhile the<br />
Abbasid troops stormed Kufa and resumed their march toward Syria.In<br />
November 749 Ibrahim’s brother Abu al-Abbas al-Saffah was proclaimed<br />
caliph in the great mosque of Kufa.<br />
Abu Muslim did not accompany the victorious Abbasid troops to Iraq<br />
but stayed in Merv, eventually as the new dynasty’s governor of<br />
Khurasan.His presence was certainly needed to keep an eye on its restless<br />
population, for soon even those who had furthered the revolution<br />
began to challenge the new masters on the grounds that the promises of<br />
pious rule had not been kept.There flared up a series of revolts, some<br />
in the name of the Alids, others inspired by charismatic leaders who<br />
claimed their own definitive versions of prophethood, but most of which<br />
had roots in an amalgam of earlier messianic cults with the craving of<br />
the masses for greater social justice.Two of these phenomena stand out<br />
as especially characteristic.In Nishapur there appeared a man named<br />
Bih-Afarid, who claimed to have a divine mandate to found a new cult<br />
which contained elements of Zoroastrianism mixed with his own accretions.He<br />
did not challenge Abu Muslim or the Muslim community, but<br />
rather the Zoroastrian priesthood which had preserved their role of<br />
leaders of the local religious community enjoying the status of dhimmis<br />
or protected minorities.These mubadhs (official clergy) complained to<br />
Abu Muslim about the matter, drawing his attention to the fact that the<br />
trouble-maker represented a danger both for them and for him.The<br />
governor thus suppressed the movement, just as he did a simultaneous<br />
turbulence in Transoxania led by the Alid partisan Sharik ibn Shaykh<br />
al-Mahri.Sharik gained to his side even some segments of the Arab<br />
establishment in Bukhara and Khwarazm, as well as the urban population<br />
of Bukhara, whereas the local nobility, led by the Bukhar Khudat<br />
Qutayba (this Sogdian nobleman was no relation to Qutayba ibn<br />
Muslim but a son of the aforementioned Bukhar Khudat Tughshada;<br />
the latter, a convert to Islam, named his son Qutayba in honor of the<br />
Arab commander), stayed on the side of the new masters.Abu Muslim
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 65<br />
did not intervene personally, but sent troops under Ziyad ibn Salih who<br />
speedily and ruthlessly crushed the insurgents: first in Bukhara, then in<br />
Samarkand.Ziyad stayed on in Samarkand as governor, and soon was<br />
to fight and win a battle whose historical importance (which no doubt<br />
escaped him) will be mentioned below.<br />
One of Abu Muslim’s partisans was a certain Hashim ibn Hakim (his<br />
exact name is a matter of debate), a native of Balkh who early moved to<br />
the vicinity of Merv.He took part in the Abbasid dawa (religious and<br />
political propaganda), and after the murder of Abu Muslim in 755<br />
joined other groups of Shii extremists often characterized by the epithet<br />
ghulat, “those who exaggerate.” These dissidents often claimed to possess<br />
an understanding of the inner meaning (batin; hence their collective<br />
name Batiniya) of the Koran and thus felt free to give it the interpretation<br />
of their choice, in contrast to the more orthodox believers who followed<br />
its outer meaning (zahir).Some of the Batiniya went so far as to<br />
attribute prophethood or even divinity to the founders or leaders of their<br />
sects.A striking example is that of a sect founded by Hashim ibn Hakim<br />
when he emerged, sometime in 759 or soon thereafter, with claims of<br />
being a prophet and an incarnation of divinity.He also began to appear<br />
only with his face hidden under a qina or veil (either of green silk or a<br />
mask of gold), and thus came to be known in Arabic as al-Muqanna,“The<br />
Veiled One.” The reason for this comportment received two explanations:<br />
according to his adherents, he wanted to shield the mortals from<br />
the impact of his divine radiance, or, according to his detractors, he<br />
wished to hide the deformities of his face.Al-Muqanna gained a devoted<br />
following in Khurasan, but not enough to openly challenge Abbasid<br />
authority there.His dais or missionaries, however, met with remarkable<br />
success in Transoxania, so that he himself eventually joined them and<br />
launched an open uprising that came close to overthrowing Abbasid rule<br />
in Central Asia. The struggle lasted for some fourteen years, until after<br />
several reverses the caliph al-Mahdi’s troops managed to surround the<br />
rebels’ mountain stronghold Sanam, to the east of the Sogdian city of<br />
Kesh, and storm it in 783.Al-Muqanna perished in the assault, and historical<br />
sources offer conflicting versions of his death.One states that he<br />
had thrown himself into a fire, wishing to be consumed by it to the point<br />
of annihilation which would make his followers believe that he had risen<br />
to heaven.The subsequent destinies of his movement bear out, if not<br />
the letter, then the spirit of this version.It existed as an underground sect<br />
for perhaps two centuries, outwardly professing Islam but secretly<br />
expecting al-Muqanna’s triumphant return.The initial strength of the
66 A history of Inner Asia<br />
movement and its subsequent tenacity has been attributed by some historians<br />
to its socio-religious message: al-Muqanna, it seems, preached<br />
freedom from the strictures of Islamic ritual, as well as communal ownership<br />
of not only the means of production but even of women.The<br />
name of the sect, al-Mubayyida in Arabic and Safid-jamagan in Persian<br />
(“wearers of white raiments”), usually understood as a symbol of resistance<br />
to the Abbasids, whose color symbol was black (and thus were also<br />
called al-Musawwida), might also be explained through the white garments<br />
worn by the masses that constituted the bulk of al-Muqanna’s followers,<br />
the peasants of Transoxania.A curious feature of the movement,<br />
however, was the success it seems to have had among the Turks of<br />
the adjacent steppes; at least the sources state that he had written the<br />
“khaqan of the Turks,” and that some of the latter had joined the<br />
Mubayyida.They may of course have been attracted by the initially successful<br />
raids on the settled areas under Abbasid control.The “socialist”<br />
(or even “communist”) features of the sect have been linked by some historians<br />
with the proto-communist movement founded by Mazdak in<br />
Sasanian Iran during the reign of Kavad (488–531), and suppressed by<br />
the latter’s successor Chosroes I Anushirvan.It is this social message<br />
preached by al-Muqanna that secured him favorable comments and<br />
considerable interest in Soviet historiography.<br />
the uighur qaghanate<br />
With Transoxania firmly in their grasp, the Arabs began to probe the<br />
territories beyond the other river, the Syr Darya.This land was<br />
Semireche, the region under the control of the western wing of the<br />
Turkic qaghanate.By the middle of the eighth century, when the Arab<br />
thrust into Semireche had begun to gain momentum, the senior, eastern<br />
wing of the Kök Turk empire in Mongolia had collapsed and had been<br />
succeeded by another Turkic group, the aforementioned Uighurs, whose<br />
empire lasted from 744 to 840.The change may have been more a displacement<br />
of the leading dynasties, clans or tribes than a truly ethnic or<br />
linguistic one, and it probably involved even less intrinsic transformation<br />
than the almost contemporary switch, within the Islamic empire, from<br />
the Umayyad to the Abbasid caliphate.The Uighur language and<br />
alphabet, and the location of the qaghans’ political center, were barely<br />
distinguishable from those of the Kök Turks.The main initial difference<br />
may have been the fact that the ruling clan remained contented with its<br />
possessions in Mongolia and eastern Sinkiang and did not undertake
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 67<br />
major campaigns east and west.Furthermore, the Uighurs had lively,<br />
mostly friendly relations with China, including trade and family alliances<br />
with the Tang dynasty.There were other differences between<br />
them and the Kök Turks.The new dynasty had a distinct capital city,<br />
called Qarabalghasun or Ordubaligh; some segments of the population<br />
began to settle and practice agriculture; and Manichaeism became the<br />
state religion when Tengri Qaghan (759–79), on a visit to the other<br />
Chinese capital, Loyang (one of the two capitals of Tang China, the<br />
better-known one being Changan, the present-day Xian), was converted<br />
by missionaries who came there with the Sogdian trading colony.The<br />
conversion effected a psychological switch in the mentality of the elite,<br />
a change quite palpable in the contrast between the tenor of the inscriptions<br />
on steles erected by the Uighur qaghans at Qarabalghasun and that<br />
of the earlier ones of the Kök Turks.The martial pride of the pagan<br />
dynasty was replaced by the compassionate ethic of the new converts, a<br />
mutation not unlike that effected many centuries later by the conversion<br />
of the Eastern Mongols to Buddhism.Here is an excerpt from an<br />
inscription in Qarabalghasun:<br />
Let the people accept the Religion of Light.Let the country with barbarous<br />
customs and reeking blood change into one where the people abstain from<br />
eating meat.Let the state where men kill be transformed into a kingdom where<br />
good works are done.<br />
The Uighurs did, however, retain for the time being one remarkable<br />
feature of the Kök Turkic civilization – their rune-like script.<br />
the battle of 751<br />
Meanwhile, in the territories formerly identifiable as the western wing of<br />
the Kök Turkic empire, an evolution not unlike that in the east took<br />
place, when tribes commonly labeled as Türgesh gained ascendancy and<br />
developed a symbiotic relationship with the settled fringes of their<br />
domains and with Transoxania.In addition to Suyab, a city in the valley<br />
of the Chu, we should also mention Talas (also spelled Taraz, near<br />
modern Jambul), another such town farther west near the Talas river, as<br />
counterparts to the Qarabalghasun of the Uighurs.Moreover, the still<br />
shamanistic Turks of Semireche soon experienced the approach of the<br />
Muslims, and eventually were converted to Islam.This process was first<br />
triggered by a relatively minor incident which would, however, have historic<br />
consequences.<br />
Sinkiang had by this time – the middle of the eighth century – been
68 A history of Inner Asia<br />
for almost a century under the domination of Tang China, its petty<br />
monarchs being beholden to the authority of the governor residing at<br />
Kucha.The tentacles of Chinese power now began to probe the territory<br />
to the west as well, and the rulers of Tashkent and Fergana appear<br />
to have been among the vassals of the Tang.The former carried the<br />
Turkic title chabish, the latter the Iranian title ikhshid, possibly a reflection<br />
of their ethnolinguistic background.Like them, the nomadic Türgesh<br />
too recognized Tang suzerainty.In 750 there erupted a quarrel between<br />
the chabish and the ikhshid, with the Türgesh taking part as the allies of<br />
the chabish.The ikhshid requested help from the Chinese.The emperor<br />
instructed Kao Hsien-chih, the governor of Sinkiang, to intervene, and<br />
despite the fact that the king of Tashkent had submitted, the city was<br />
sacked and the chabish – together with the qaghan of the Türgesh – led<br />
away as prisoner.Eventually he was executed in Changan, while Kao<br />
Hsien-chih was rewarded.Meanwhile, however, the chabish’s son had<br />
fled to Samarkand and appealed to Ziyad ibn Salih, the aforementioned<br />
governor, for help.Ziyad asked Abu Muslim for reinforcements, and by<br />
next summer, 751, was ready to take on the Chinese.Kao Hsien-chih<br />
marched in with his troops and Qarluq auxiliaries as well as a contingent<br />
from Fergana.As the two adversaries met in battle at the end of July<br />
near Taraz, the Qarluq switched sides.The Chinese were crushed, and<br />
Kao Hsien-chih barely escaped.<br />
The Arabs’ victory had more lasting and far-reaching consequences<br />
than this relatively obscure battle seemed to promise, for China never<br />
again ventured to claim mastery over territories beyond Sinkiang – with<br />
minor exceptions during the rule of the last dynasty to rule China, that<br />
of the Ching (Manchus), as we shall relate in due course.The effect of<br />
the Arab victory was heightened by the opportune time at which it<br />
occurred.The Islamic empire had just emerged from a civil war that<br />
brought to power the Abbasid dynasty, whereas China was on the<br />
threshold of an upheaval that would come close to destroying the Tang<br />
dynasty.Moreover, not only were the Abbasids at the peak of their<br />
youthful vigor, but their outlook had a more eastern orientation than<br />
that of the Umayyads.Besides the obvious factor of the location of their<br />
capital, Baghdad, this meant that a greater role was played by non-Arab<br />
Muslim converts from the eastern marches of the empire, both at its<br />
center and in the provinces, especially the Central Asian ones.These<br />
converts were chiefly Iranians (Persians, Sogdians, Khwarazmians,<br />
Tokharistanians) and Turks.Thus after the brief Arab interlude, the<br />
main actors in the history of Central Asia would soon again be members
Kök Turks, Chinese expansion, and Arab conquest 69<br />
of its native populations – albeit through the new prism of Muslim civilization,<br />
in which the Arabic language and script retained a permanent<br />
and important place.<br />
The Arab victory of 751 had yet another consequence: the victors<br />
captured a certain number of Chinese, some of whom were expert at<br />
manufacturing paper, an art practiced in China but unknown in the<br />
West.The Arabs were quick to learn from their captives, and paper<br />
manufacture spread throughout the Islamic world from where it also<br />
reached Christian Europe.The innovation replaced the much less<br />
flexible and more costly papyrus and parchment, with far-reaching economic<br />
and cultural consequences.
chapter three<br />
The Samanids<br />
The Arab victory at Talas in 751 was barely noticed by contemporary<br />
chroniclers, Muslim or Chinese, but the modern observer, with the<br />
advantage of hindsight, assigns to this event the exceptional historical<br />
importance it deserves.We see here what an effect a combination of geopolitical<br />
realities with an inspired militant religion can have.Distance<br />
compounded by the mighty barrier of the Tianshan and Pamir mountains<br />
made the territories to the west and northwest of Sinkiang remote<br />
and difficult of access for China, but the main cause of Muslim success<br />
and Chinese failure lay in the fact that the Celestial Empire was not fired<br />
by any comparable proselytizing zeal.In contrast, the Arabs were driven<br />
by the ideal of the jihad or Holy War, and the fact that the fruits of victory<br />
also brought the conquerors great material rewards does not diminish<br />
the catalytic role of the primary motivation.The Arabs subsequently<br />
transmitted this zeal to the converts of newly conquered Central Asian<br />
territories, so that when the caliphate began to lose its youthful vigor, the<br />
jihad was no longer led by them but by a new Iranian dynasty of<br />
Transoxania, the Samanids.Islam’s penetration of these eastern<br />
marches was then consummated by the wholesale conversion of a Turkic<br />
dynasty, the Qarakhanids, with its territories and tribes joining the Dar<br />
al-Islam.<br />
The Samanids were of Iranian stock; this underscores the fact that<br />
henceforward not Arab governors but native, at first Iranian, and later<br />
mostly Turkic, but always Muslim dynasts would rule Islamic Central<br />
Asia – except for a few special periods, the latest of which ended, for<br />
Western Turkestan, in 1991.Not that the caliphs would have lost all<br />
authority there.The pious Samanids never ceased to acknowledge them<br />
as their suzerains, or to send regular tribute to Baghdad; and even later,<br />
when the Turks gained ascendancy, investiture from the caliph remained<br />
a coveted if only ceremonial distinction.<br />
Tokharistan was the original home of the Samanids.The family’s<br />
70
The Samanids 71<br />
eponym was remembered as Saman-khuda, and the name suggests that<br />
he was the local landord (khuda) of a place named Saman in the vicinity<br />
of Balkh.He entered the service of the Arab governor of Khurasan and<br />
converted to Islam, but the family’s political fortunes really began with<br />
his four grandsons, whom the Abbasid caliph al-Mamun (813–33)<br />
rewarded for their services by having them appointed to as many<br />
regional governorships: Samarkand, Fergana, Shash (Tashkent), and<br />
Herat.Gradually, rule came to be concentrated in the hands of a single<br />
amir (or emir; commander, prince – an Arabic title preferred by this first<br />
indigenous Islamic dynasty of Central Asia; it was also used by the last<br />
one, the Manghit emirs, whose rule ended in 1920 when Bolshevik<br />
troops stormed Bukhara), and Bukhara became the Samanids’ chief residence.Not<br />
only Transoxania but also Khurasan and at times other<br />
neighboring regions came under their rule, and the Khwarazmshahs<br />
recognized their suzerainty.<br />
It was under the able and felicitous reign of the Samanids that Islamic<br />
Central Asia came of age, acquiring the major features of a mature<br />
Islamic civilization.One of these was its firm adherence to the new religion.This<br />
manifested itself not only through overall loyalty to Islam, but<br />
also through the activities of its religious scholars such as Bukhari<br />
(810–69), born in the vicinity of Samarkand but active chiefly in<br />
Bukhara.The Sahih, a compendium of hadith or sayings attributed to the<br />
Prophet, compiled in Arabic by Bukhari, eventually became one of the<br />
most revered books throughout the Islamic world.Another feature was<br />
the substitution of the Persian linguistic identity for the Sogdian and<br />
Khwarazmian identities within the Iranian framework of Central Asia.<br />
This may at first sight seem surprising, in view of the role that Arabic<br />
and Turkic came to play there.Arabic of course at first enjoyed the prestige<br />
of being the master’s idiom, and drew additional vigor from the fact<br />
that whole tribal segments moved in as part of the conquering hosts and<br />
subsequently settled there – especially in Khurasan, less so in<br />
Transoxania and hardly at all in Khwarazm.A more lasting title to glory<br />
for Arabic, however, was assured by its role as the sacred language of the<br />
Koran, and hence of most of the religious literature that would soon<br />
proliferate there, as the case of the Sahih shows, for example.<br />
Furthermore, Arabic also became the medium of the exact sciences and<br />
medicine that began to flourish in Central Asia.<br />
The true rise of Turkic would occur only after the Samanids; for the<br />
moment it was the Turks themselves who began to make their presence<br />
felt: the Iranian dynasty gradually built up troops composed of mostly
72 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Turkic ghulams, military slaves who were preferred by the rulers not only<br />
for their prowess but also for their loyalty, which was unadulterated by<br />
other allegiances.The ghulams were acquired through the slave trade<br />
that flourished along the frontiers of the Dar al-Islam.Samarkand functioned<br />
in the ninth and tenth centuries as an important slave market, and<br />
Turkic slaves were the choicest part of the tribute which the governors<br />
of Transoxania and later the Samanids regularly sent to Baghdad.Both<br />
the Samanids and the caliphs themselves used these Turks in the same<br />
manner: as praetorian guards at the center of the empire, and, increasingly,<br />
as governors in the provinces.This process, also characteristic of<br />
other parts of the Islamic world and of other periods, and drawing on<br />
other ethnic groups, may seem contradictory or paradoxical to us; in<br />
Islam, however, it played an at times crucial role, even to the point where<br />
these slave soldiers seized power and formed their own ruling dynasties.<br />
During the period under consideration, Turks and Slavs – the latter<br />
mainly western Slavs acquired by the Umayyads of Spain and Fatimids<br />
of Tunisia – were the two main sources of military slaves.<br />
Nevertheless, at the cultural and linguistic level, Samanid rule in<br />
Khurasan and Transoxania played a catalytic role in the rise of a new<br />
Iranian identity, which was Islamic.A new language, Persian, came into<br />
being and replaced the kindred Sogdian and Khwarazmian idioms as<br />
the language of statecraft (besides Arabic) and literature.Its roots went<br />
back to the official language of the last pre-Islamic dynasty, that of the<br />
Sasanians, who in turn were heirs to predecessors of whom the earliest<br />
historical dynasty, that of the Achaemenids, had its ceremonial capital<br />
in Fars, a province in southern Iran.The prestige of this city and province,<br />
known to the Greeks as Persepolis and Persis, throughout Iran’s<br />
pre-Islamic past, reasserted itself after the Arab conquest less there than<br />
in Central Asia; for through a special process of cultural shift, the now<br />
Muslim Iranians from Fars joined the Arab conquerors to rule Khurasan<br />
and Transoxania, and were in turn joined by those local Iranians who<br />
proved to be fervent converts not only from Zoroastrianism to Islam but<br />
also from Sogdian or other Central Asian idioms to Farsi, as the Persians<br />
now call their language.Furthermore, the impact of the new religion<br />
with its powerful Arabic text, the Koran, of the voluminous theological<br />
literature in Arabic, and of the status Arabic had as the original ruling<br />
elite’s language, effected a rapid transformation of Middle Persian into<br />
New Persian, a lexically hybrid language molded through a fusion with<br />
the conqueror’s speech not unlike the way English was molded through<br />
a fusion of Anglo-Saxon with Latin and French after 1066.In the early
The Samanids 73<br />
stage of this process contemporary Islamic authors called this new language<br />
Dari (a name retained or resurrected in modern Afghanistan),<br />
probably because they associated it with the royal court (dar) of the<br />
Sasanians.It was in the final decades of Samanid rule that the process<br />
reached its definitive consecration with the appearance of major poets<br />
writing in this language, above all Rudaki (d.ca.941) and Firdawsi (d.<br />
ca.1020).Rudaki was born near Samarkand and spent much of his life<br />
as a court poet in Bukhara.Firdawsi (“the paradisiac one,” a pen-name<br />
derived from firdaws, “paradise,” adaptation of an ancient Iranian word<br />
which also entered Greek and thence other European languages with<br />
this connotation) hailed from the Kurasanian city of Tus, near modern<br />
Meshed.He composed his great epic, the Shahname, probably by 999,<br />
and subsequently spent some time at the court of Mahmud of Ghazna<br />
in Afghanistan before returning to his hometown.We cannot but be<br />
bemused by history’s unpredictable whims: the first great flowering of<br />
Islamic Iranian culture occurred in Central Asia, a region whose major<br />
segment would soon embark on a process that would turn it into<br />
Turkestan; only after this process had run its normative course in<br />
Central Asia and the Caucasus, did this new Persian return to its erstwhile<br />
home province, where the city of Shiraz, near the ruins of<br />
Persepolis, attained deserved fame with such poets as Sadi (1210–91)<br />
and Hafiz (1327–90).<br />
The Samanid dynasty’s power and glory peaked under the reign of<br />
three great amirs: Ismail (892–907), Ahmad (907–13), and Nasr<br />
(913–43).It was during their rule that Transoxania emancipated itself<br />
from the role of being Khurasan’s subordinate province and moved to<br />
the forefront of Islamic Central Asia.At the same time, however, the<br />
Samanids, content with the relatively modest title of amirs, never ceased<br />
acknowledging the Abbasid caliphs as their suzerains in the khutba<br />
(Friday sermon) and sikka (minting process in which the legends struck<br />
on coins included the names of the amirs’ suzerains).They continued to<br />
send regular tribute to the caliphs, and to suppress any Shii and Khariji<br />
attempts to challenge Sunni Islam and thus the caliph’s authority.<br />
Prosperity based on agriculture, handicrafts, and trade made their realm<br />
the envy of visitors from other parts of the Islamic world, as we can infer<br />
from reports by visitors like the aforementioned diplomatic envoy Ibn<br />
Fadlan and the geographer Ibn Hawqal, a native of Nusaybin in what<br />
is today southeastern Turkey.Ibn Hawqal came to the Samanid domains<br />
in 969 after having visited much of the Islamic world in the course of<br />
journeys that began in 943 and first took him all the way to Spain and
74 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the Sahara.Here are a few excerpts from his Kitab Surat al-ard (“Book of<br />
Geography”):<br />
Bukhara is the seat of the government of the entire Khurasan; the province lies<br />
on the road that leads to the districts of Transoxania.Adjacent regions also<br />
enter under its jurisdiction.The name of the city is Numijkat.It lies in a plain.<br />
Houses built with lattice arranged in a trellis manner crowd the place.<br />
[However], the city has [also] palaces, orchards, paved roads, and neighborhoods<br />
which extend over twelve parasangs lengthwise and crosswise.This whole<br />
complex – the palaces, buildings, neighborhoods and inner city – is surrounded<br />
by a wall.None of this space is deserted or dilapidated or uncultivated, and the<br />
city is a real home, summer and winter, for its citizens.There is in the interior<br />
another wall, a strong rampart which encompasses [the inner] city with a diameter<br />
of one parasang; the citadel stands outside this rampart but next to it, so<br />
that this part has the appearance of a small town provided with a fortress.The<br />
Samanid lords of Khurasan live in this citadel.There is an extensive suburb;<br />
the Friday mosque rises in the [inner] city by the gate of the citadel.The prison<br />
is inside the citadel, whereas the bazars are in the suburb.No city of Khurasan<br />
and Transoxania is more densely populated than Bukhara.The suburb and the<br />
bazars are traversed by the Sughd River, which reaches here its terminus; it<br />
drives the water mills, waters the domains and cultivated land, and the surplus<br />
devolves into a basin near Baykand.<br />
Ibn Hawqal thus describes here the classical Central Asian city of the<br />
early Islamic period.It consisted of three basic segments: the citadel (ark,<br />
quhandiz, qala), inner city or city proper (shahristan, madina), and outer city<br />
or suburb (rabad ).He then gives a detailed description of Bukhara’s<br />
topography, especially of its gates and of the irrigation canals into which<br />
the Zarafshan River ramifies as it enters the area, and he continues:<br />
The fruits of Bukhara are the best and tastiest of all Transoxania.A remarkable<br />
proof of the soil’s fertility is that the yield of a single jarib can provide<br />
enough sustenance for a man with his family and servants.Nevertheless, the<br />
density of Bukhara’s population is so high and the living expenses so great that<br />
the food produced there covers only one half of the need, so that they have to<br />
acquire the rest from other parts of Transoxania.<br />
After having described the surroundings of Bukhara, Ibn Hawqal<br />
describes the city’s inhabitants:<br />
The language of Bukhara is Sogdian (lisan al-Sughd), with some minor peculiarities,<br />
but the people also speak Dari (la-hum lisan bi ‘l-dariya; i.e. Farsi,<br />
Persian).The inhabitants surpass all other Khurasanians in their culture, their<br />
knowledge of religion and their legal expertise, their religious spirit, their<br />
loyalty, their good manners and perfect social relationships, their absence of<br />
bad instincts, their zeal for good works, their excellent intentions and the purity
The Samanids 75<br />
of their sentiments… Their basic coin is the dirham, whereas the dinar serves<br />
only as the theoretical monetary unit....<br />
...They say that the population of Bukhara was in remote antiquity composed<br />
of immigrants from Istakhr [a city in Fars].The Samanids chose Bukhara<br />
as their capital because it was the closest Transoxanian city to Khurasan:<br />
whoever possesses this city has Khurasan before him and Transoxania behind<br />
him ...The territory of Bukhara borders Sogdia on the east; some people,<br />
however, consider Bukhara, Kesh and Nasaf to be part of Sogdia....The chief<br />
city of Sogdia is Samarkand.<br />
Spiritual, intellectual and artistic life in the Samanid domains thrived,<br />
although it is impossible to isolate it from similar florescence in several<br />
other parts of the Islamic world, beginning with the neighboring<br />
Khwarazm.Ceramics, metalwork, and wall painting are all attested by<br />
archeological finds or through literature.Buildings erected by the<br />
Samanids have not survived, except for a mausoleum in Bukhara attributed<br />
to the aforementioned Ismail: famous as the “Samanid mausoleum,”<br />
it is a gem rightly cherished as one of the most appealing and<br />
original examples of Islamic architecture.<br />
The Samanids are also remembered, however, for the jihad that they<br />
waged on the northeastern frontier of their territories, in the Bilad al-<br />
Turk, the Turkestan of that period.One significant date is 893, when<br />
Ismail crossed the Syr Darya, took Talas (which we have mentioned as<br />
the scene of the memorable battle between the Arabs and Chinese in<br />
751; although they won, the Arabs withdrew after the event) and turned<br />
the local Nestorian church into a mosque.This incident reminds us of<br />
the symbiotic relationship that had existed between the heathen Turks<br />
and the Christian, Buddhist, and other sedentaries – whether Sogdian<br />
or Turkic – in these fringes of the Inner Asian steppe belt.Most Turkic<br />
nomads were still pagan despite the inroads made by Christianity and<br />
Buddhism among them, and it was the Samanid campaigns that set in<br />
motion their massive conversion to Islam. Jihad was only an initial and<br />
relatively minor stage in the process, however.Two other forms of conversion<br />
were characteristic of this area and period, that is, Semireche<br />
and westernmost Sinkiang in the second half of the tenth century and<br />
first half of the eleventh: namely, the proselytic one practiced by inspired<br />
dais or missionary dervishes who on their own ventured into the steppes<br />
and, often living in the aforementioned ribats, preached to the nomads,<br />
and a pragmatic or political one by which Turkic chieftains chose to<br />
adopt the new religion and effect wholesale conversions of their tribes.<br />
Modern historiography has labeled these chieftains as Qarakhanids or
76 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Ilig (also spelled Ilek) Khans, a family dynasty whose origins are sought<br />
among the tribes of Qarluq, Yaghma, and Chigil toward the end of the<br />
ninth century.The Qarakhanids thus made their appearance as slightly<br />
later contemporaries of the Samanids and their immediate neighbors.<br />
Their story will come in a later chapter, but a certain paradox should be<br />
mentioned without delay.Once they entered the community of the Dar<br />
al-Islam as Muslims, these Turks reversed the trend of actual conquest<br />
and themselves conquered Transoxania.Turning against the Samanids,<br />
by 999 – or by 1005, if a final attempt of the losing party is included –<br />
they extinguished the last non-Turkic rule there and established themselves<br />
in Samarkand and Bukhara.But even more crucial was the fact<br />
that this Qarakhanid victory set in motion the eventually victorious<br />
process of the Turkicization of Transoxania, and of the transformation<br />
of the entire region into Turkestan – with the qualification that this<br />
victory was never complete, for Islamic Persian culture remained firmly<br />
entrenched in the entire area, and New Persian was the idiom of that<br />
culture.On the other hand, the Turkicizing wave – represented there by<br />
Oghuz Turkic tribes moving southward – eventually also crossed the<br />
Amu Darya and engulfed the territory between it and the Persian border<br />
to such an extent that this region, today’s Turkmenistan, is barely<br />
remembered as once being a part of Khurasan but is felt to be inseparable<br />
from Turkestan.<br />
The turn of the millennium thus heralded a marked increase in the<br />
presence of Turks in Central Asia, as well as their political and military<br />
ascendancy over its Iranian populations.Some parts of this process<br />
started as early as the beginning of the ninth century, but it was during<br />
the second half of the tenth century that it quickened and finally burst<br />
into the open.
chapter four<br />
The Uighur kingdom of Qocho<br />
The ninth century was marked in Transoxania, as we have said, by a de<br />
facto reaffirmation of Central Asian identity at the expense of the Arab<br />
conquerors.For the time being, this identity, while Islamic religiously<br />
and culturally, was chiefly Iranian, despite the strengthening of Turkic<br />
elements.In Sinkiang, on the other hand, there occurred the first of the<br />
events that opened the gate toward the eventual Turkicization of the<br />
greater part of Inner Asia.It was triggered by another event in Mongolia<br />
whose importance lay mainly in setting this process in motion.<br />
The Uighur qaghanate of Mongolia was in 840 overthrown by the<br />
Kyrgyz, a Turkic people who at that time lived in southern Siberia along<br />
the upper Yenisei and in what is today the republic of Tuva, where the<br />
Yenisei has its sources.Most of the Uighurs then moved west, chiefly to<br />
two areas: to the Chinese province of Kansu, where they became known<br />
as Yellow Uighurs but otherwise did not leave much trace; and to eastern<br />
Sinkiang, where they founded the Uighur kingdom of Qocho, which<br />
would last for four centuries (850–1250).<br />
As we have said in the introductory chapter, Qocho is today an archeological<br />
site, situated about 30 kilometers to the east of Turfan; Turfan,<br />
in turn, is flanked on the west by another ruin, a still older city known<br />
by its Chinese name of Chiao-Ho (“City [between] two rivers”) and,<br />
later, by its Turco-Mongol name Yar-khoto (“Cliff city”).The three sites<br />
symbolize the cultural chronology of the area: (1) Chiao-Ho of antiquity<br />
and the early Middle Ages, the center of a kingdom whose people<br />
spoke an Indo-European tongue labeled by modern scholars as<br />
Tokharian.These city dwellers and agriculturists developed toward the<br />
end of their kingdom’s existence a remarkable civilization, chiefly<br />
Buddhist and Manichaean; (2) Qocho of the Uighurs, who Turkicized<br />
the area linguistically but absorbed its Buddhist and Manichaean<br />
culture; (3) and Turfan, which grew toward the end of the Middle Ages<br />
77
78 A history of Inner Asia<br />
at the expense of the other two as an increasingly Islamic city with a<br />
Turki-speaking population.<br />
The Uighurs who established their kingdom in Qocho by 850 did<br />
not move to an unfamiliar territory.The qaghans already had some<br />
control over these western reaches from their erstwhile capital of<br />
Qarabalghasun in Mongolia.What is more, they did not come as cultural<br />
strangers: we have mentioned their prior conversion to<br />
Manichaeism.It does appear, however, that their elite had retained to<br />
some degree the nomadic lifestyle once common among most Turks of<br />
Inner Asia; and that in this respect the fusion of the newcomers with the<br />
indigenous population proceeded only gradually.The Uighur kings<br />
resided in Qocho, a depression to the south of the Tianshan mountains,<br />
only in winter; summers were spent on the cooler, northern side of the<br />
Tianshan.That was the site of a secondary capital, Bishbalik<br />
(“Pentapolis”), also known by its Chinese name, Peiting (“Northern residence”).Located<br />
some 100 kilometers almost due north of Turfan,<br />
Bishbalik eventually disappeared even as a ruin, so that modern scholars<br />
were at first tempted to identify it with today’s capital of Sinkiang,<br />
Urumchi, until the site was proved to lie some 50 kilometers east of the<br />
latter city.<br />
The contrast between the lifestyle of the still partly nomadic Turks<br />
and that of the settled natives was many-faceted, but perhaps the most<br />
striking example is how the two groups faced the summer heat of the<br />
Turfan depression.The natives stayed home and took refuge in the<br />
underground structures of their houses, whereas the Uighurs moved to<br />
the cooler northern slopes of the Tianshan, where yurts rather than<br />
houses were their shelters.There were of course other differences: irrigated<br />
agriculture as the main occupation of the natives in contrast to<br />
livestock rearing as that of the Turks; consumption of agricultural products<br />
and duck by the sedentaries versus horse meat and kumys eaten and<br />
drunk by the newcomers; and indigenous pastimes based on the home<br />
scene as compared with the paramilitary pursuits of the nomads,<br />
namely, horseback riding and hunting.This atmosphere was captured in<br />
an account written by Wang Yang-ti, an envoy from the Sung emperor<br />
of China to the Uighur king of Qocho, who visited the kingdom in 982:<br />
In this country it neither rains nor snows, and the heat is extreme.Every year,<br />
when summer is at its hottest, the inhabitants move underground....Houses<br />
are covered with white clay.... There is a river which flows from a mountain<br />
defile called Ching-ling: it has been regulated in such a way that its waters pass<br />
around the capital, irrigate its fields and gardens, and move its mills.The
The Uighur kingdom of Qocho 79<br />
country produces the five principal types of cereals....The nobility eat horseflesh,<br />
while the rest of the population eat mutton, ducks, and geese.In music,<br />
they play a sort of mandoline and a five-chord guitar.The men enjoy horseback<br />
riding and archery....Their calendar is the Chinese one published in the<br />
seventh year of the kai-huang period (= 587)....Those who like to take long<br />
walks never forget to bring along a musical instrument.There are some fifty<br />
Buddhist monasteries, and their names are written on their gates: these names<br />
were given to them by the Tang emperors.In one of the monasteries there is a<br />
large number of Buddhist books, the Chinese dictionaries Tang-yun and Yupien,<br />
and the Ching-in.There are in Kaochang (= Qocho) several collections<br />
of [Chinese] imperial decrees; in a locked box they keep a decree written personally<br />
by the emperor Tai-tsung [627–50].There is a Manichaean temple<br />
called Ma-ni-se or the Temple of the Pearl; the priests are from Persia, they<br />
strictly observe their own rites and qualify the Buddhist books as wai-tao (“alien<br />
doctrine”).There are no destitute people in the kingdom: those who cannot<br />
provide for themselves are cared for by public welfare.Many people reach<br />
advanced age. 1<br />
In other respects, however, a fairly rapid process of symbiosis and<br />
fusion did take place.The Indo-European “Tokharian,” deprived of its<br />
official status, faded into oblivion as the population adopted the newcomers’<br />
language.On the other hand, if the Uighurs were victorious on<br />
the linguistic level, they mostly succumbed, as we have said, to the<br />
natives on the religious and cultural level: they converted to Buddhism,<br />
and gave up their rune-like alphabet for the local one, which eventually<br />
and rather incongruously became known as the Uighur script.Their<br />
kingdom adapted and further developed the Buddhist civilization that<br />
they found there, with its hallmarks of tolerance, propensity for sacred<br />
figural art and painting, and a literature which was chiefly religious but<br />
which also included some belles-lettres and legal documents.<br />
Manichaeism and Nestorian Christianity were allowed to exist beside<br />
the dominant Buddhist faith, and both – especially the former – have<br />
also left valuable examples of texts and art.The heyday of the Uighur<br />
kingdom of Qocho coincided with the final stage of the florescence of<br />
Buddhism in China, and the Silk Road functioned as one of the two<br />
principal avenues between that religion’s holy places in India and the<br />
Celestial Empire, with pilgrims and scholars frequently passing through<br />
way stations like Qocho.The result was a strong impact of Chinese<br />
Buddhist culture, and a lively translation activity of Sanskrit texts into<br />
Uighur Turkic through their Chinese versions.We may also add a third<br />
1 S.Julien, “Relation d’un voyage officiel dans le pays des Ouigours (de 981 à 983) par Wang-yente,”<br />
Journal Asiatique 4 (1847): 50–66.
80 A history of Inner Asia<br />
factor here, the frequenting of Qocho by Sogdian merchants: for the city<br />
was one of the most important hubs of the Silk Road trade and concomitant<br />
travel – an aspect that intensified its physiognomy as a gallery of<br />
cultures and religions.<br />
Some of this art and literature has survived, mostly stored in temples<br />
at Qocho or other sites, such as the cave monasteries of nearby Bezeklik<br />
or the more distant Kyzyl and Tunhuang; since the beginning of the<br />
twentieth century these cultural depositories have been the goal of<br />
archeological expeditions from several European countries as well as<br />
Japan and now China itself.The finds brought back have become a treasure-trove<br />
for philologists and cultural historians, and their study and<br />
publication still continues.We have already mentioned the interest<br />
which texts in “Tokharian” hold for the study of this unique Indo-<br />
European tongue; here we need to stress the role played by the much<br />
larger collections of texts in Uighur Turkic, dating from between the<br />
tenth and fourteenth centuries: they are invaluable documents for<br />
Turcologists, but also for historians of Manichaeism, a religion persecuted<br />
to extinction and even to the destruction of all trace of it in the<br />
areas of its origin and subsequent spread, whether in Iraq, Egypt, or<br />
France.In a previous chapter we have mentioned the transformation<br />
wrought by conversion to Manichaeism among the Uighurs during their<br />
imperial period in Mongolia (744–840).The process resumed in this<br />
second and much longer incarnation of Uighur statehood, and the<br />
psychological effect is palpable in the mass of Manichaean and Buddhist<br />
literature written in Uighur.<br />
As we have said, the philological interest of this literature is at least as<br />
great, for it documents the rapid process of Turkicization of the area.A<br />
characteristic case is the aforementioned biography of Hsüan-tsang.In<br />
addition to the Chinese original, there is also an Uighur translation<br />
made in 932 by a certain Singqu Sali of Bishbalik.By then Buddhism<br />
had peaked in China, and the flow of Buddhist missionary and cultural<br />
activity, which had been reaching Sinkiang from India, now began to<br />
reverse itself and stream in from China.Thus many Uighur texts, originally<br />
Sanskrit, were actually translated through their Chinese intermediary.In<br />
the case of Hsüan-tsang’s biography the Chinese version was<br />
of course the original.It may be worthwhile to quote one of the two colophons<br />
of the Uighur translation in order to illustrate the linguistic<br />
climate as it was perceived by its contemporaries:<br />
Now in the blessed great land of China the disciple Hui-li, who has fully penetrated<br />
the Doctrine of the Three Treasuries, became inspired and created [this
The Uighur kingdom of Qocho 81<br />
book] in the Chinese language; a master scholar by the name of Yen-tsung<br />
expanded it; the district military governor Singqu Sali of Bishbaliq in turn<br />
translated it from the Chinese language into the Turkic language (Türk tilintä).<br />
The Uighur kingdom of Qocho thus became an amalgam of an<br />
indigenous people and civilization, originally Indo-European, practicing<br />
agriculture of the irrigated oasis type, and professing one or other of the<br />
three religions (Buddhism, Manichaeism, and Christianity) and cultures<br />
brought along the Silk Road, with a ruling layer of originally nomadic<br />
Uighurs who Turkicized it linguistically but merged with it culturally.<br />
Their Buddhist rulers no longer called themselves khan or qaghan, the<br />
most common titles of Turkic monarchs, but rather preferred idiqut, a<br />
word composed of two elements, iduq plus qut, both with a connotation<br />
of spiritual auspiciousness.The relative stability and longevity of this<br />
peaceful kingdom was remarkable, for it even survived the first decades<br />
of Mongol expansion under Genghis Khan and his immediate successors<br />
as a loyal vassal: the idiqut Barchuq had the foresight to send envoys<br />
with a declaration of allegiance, and then himself appeared before the<br />
formidable conqueror at his court (1210).Survival of the kingdom was<br />
not the only reward; the people of Qocho and other cities of Sinkiang<br />
were spared the horrors of Mongol conquest, and the new empire’s<br />
bureaucratic class was in large part composed of Uighur learned<br />
bureaucrats, bakhshis who brought with them the writing system that<br />
then became the classical Mongolian script.<br />
Let us briefly return to Mongolia as it was four centuries before the<br />
rise of Genghis Khan, when the Kyrgyz destroyed the Uighur qaghanate<br />
on the Orkhon in 840 and extended their rule over parts of the<br />
country.The Kyrgyz were, as we have said, Turks like the Uighurs.<br />
Epigraphic monuments, chiefly funerary, show that they used, like the<br />
Kök Turks and Uighurs, the angular script of the Orkhon inscriptions;<br />
indirect sources, chiefly Chinese, suggest that while they shared with<br />
other Turks the semi-nomadic way of life, they also practiced some<br />
degree of agriculture and trade, mainly in Siberian products such as furs<br />
and mammoth and walrus ivory.Unlike their Kök Turk and Uighur predecessors,<br />
however, the Kyrgyz qaghans never moved their political<br />
center to Mongolia proper, but contented themselves with marginal<br />
control of the country.Their rule of some eighty years thus left little<br />
trace other than that they had triggered the Uighur emigration, and they<br />
themselves were not much affected when in 925 a people known in the<br />
sources as Khitan or Qitan, and believed to have been linguistic kinsmen<br />
of the Mongols, moved in from the northeast and substituted their rule
82 A history of Inner Asia<br />
for that of the Kyrgyz.The Khitan too showed only marginal interest in<br />
Mongolia, although they maintained some degree of sovereignty over<br />
the area even after they had conquered northern China by 965 and<br />
established their own rule there under the dynastic name of Liao.That<br />
sovereignty ended with the destruction of Liao rule by new invaders<br />
from the northeast, the Jürchen of Manchuria, in 1124 and the establishment<br />
of their own rule in northern China under the dynastic name<br />
of Chin.Unlike the Liao, the Chin paid no attention to Mongolia, and<br />
from then on until the rise of Genghis Khan toward the end of the<br />
twelfth century, there was a shifting mosaic of tribal movements, alliances,<br />
and conflicts.The people still consisted of various Turkic tribes –<br />
whose presence, after the emigration of the Uighurs and the withdrawal<br />
of the Kyrgyz, indicates the fluidity of nomadic habitat in the Inner Asia<br />
of the period – but also to an increasing degree of Mongols.The two<br />
groups – Turks and Mongols – shared the common lifestyle of pastoral<br />
nomads; the literary and religious culture of the Kök Turks and Uighurs<br />
was forgotten, and shamanism dominated their successors’ spiritual<br />
outlook, despite minor though tenacious inroads of Nestorian<br />
Christianity and Buddhism.
chapter five<br />
The Qarakhanids<br />
The turn of the millennium, as we have said, coincided in Central Asia<br />
with the collapse of the Samanids and their replacement by the<br />
Qarakhanids.To their contemporaries, this change was probably less<br />
revealing than to a historian pondering its impact.The Qarakhanids<br />
were by then Muslims like the Samanids, and the fervor of some khans<br />
seems to have surpassed that of their predecessors.Religion continued<br />
to be based on the Holy Book in Arabic, and the linguistic and cultural<br />
physiognomy of Samarkand, Bukhara, and other cities and towns as<br />
well as of the agricultural population of the countryside remained<br />
Iranian, though with an increasing shift from the Sogdian and<br />
Khwarazmian variants to Persian.<br />
The Qarakhanids were Turks, however, and their arrival signaled a<br />
definitive shift from Iranian to Turkic predominance in Central Asia.<br />
The rule of the Turks over Transoxania was not unprecedented: we have<br />
seen that in its periods of strength, the steppe empire of the Kök Turks<br />
claimed suzerainty over the petty rulers of Central Asia.That relationship<br />
was, however, marginal and intermittent, for those Turks were<br />
nomads whose lifestyle and psychological orientation had remained<br />
immersed in the steppes of Inner Asia.The Islamization of their descendants<br />
or kinsmen changed this orientation.The Qarakhanids, who<br />
replaced the Samanids at the turn of the millennium, looked up to the<br />
caliph in Baghdad and the holy cities of Mecca and Medina as their ultimate<br />
spiritual authority, and Transoxania became part of their permanent<br />
home.<br />
“Qarakhanid” is a name devised by European Orientalists in the<br />
nineteenth century and applied both to the dynasty and to the Turks<br />
ruled by it.Arabic Muslim sources called this dynasty al-Khaqaniya,<br />
“That of the [Turkic] Khaqans,” while Persian sources often preferred<br />
the name Al-i Afrasiyab, “The Family of Afrasiyab,” on the basis of the<br />
legendary kings of pre-Islamic Transoxania.The Qarakhanids ruled a<br />
83
84 A history of Inner Asia<br />
confederation of tribes living in Semireche, westernmost Tianshan<br />
(roughly identical with much of present-day Kyrgyzstan), and western<br />
Sinkiang (Kashgaria).The aforementioned tribes of Qarluq, Yaghma,<br />
and Chighil are believed to have been the core of this confederation.<br />
When it was formed some time in the ninth century, this qaghanate<br />
probably differed little from its predecessor, that of the Türgesh, and<br />
from the latter’s predecessors, the western Kök Turks, or again from<br />
their own contemporaries to the east, the Uighurs.All these groups<br />
shared a common language, social structure and the lifestyle of pastoral<br />
nomads, practicing a lively exchange with the neighboring settled populations<br />
and acquiring a taste for the products of agricultural and urban<br />
civilizations.Initially they differed from their neighbors to the southwest,<br />
the Samanids, in three fundamental aspects: religion, language, and way<br />
of life.Toward the middle of the tenth century, however, the first of the<br />
three aspects underwent a radical change when a Qarakhanid khaqan,<br />
Satuq Bughra Khan, converted to Islam and brought about a wholesale<br />
conversion of his people.This time the crucial step occurred at the<br />
Turks’ own volition – albeit in response to inspired dervishes – in contrast<br />
to the events of half a century earlier when the Samanid amir<br />
Ismail applied the more standard method of jihad in gaining Talas for the<br />
Dar al-Islam.These dervishes in fact displayed some of the characteristics<br />
of Turkic shamans, and certain aspects of popular Islam among the<br />
Turks are believed to go back to this fusion of Islamic and pagan elements.<br />
Whether by coincidence or through the effect of a heightened awareness<br />
of the Islamic emirate to the southwest, the Qarakhanids, once they<br />
became Muslims, turned their main attention toward that quarter, and<br />
by 1005 the last member of the Samanid dynasty gave up the struggle.<br />
From then on and until well into the twelfth century, the new Turkic<br />
dynasty ruled Transoxania in addition to its original domains farther<br />
north and east.Following the time-honored custom of Turkic and<br />
Mongol nomads, the Qarakhanids practiced family or clan rule rather<br />
than that of a single monarch.The territory was divided up into two,<br />
four or more appanages, and individual members sometimes moved up<br />
according to an order of seniority and corresponding status of the area<br />
(a kind of “musical chairs” succession).At the same time, Semireche and<br />
Kashgaria appear to have conserved the prestige of the dynasty’s original<br />
domains, and their qaghans retained an implicit, though often only<br />
theoretical, seniority over those members who ruled in Transoxania and<br />
Fergana.This relationship no doubt reflected the Turks’ attachment to
The Qarakhanids 85<br />
their older and more congenial homeland astride the western Tianshan<br />
mountains, and especially to Semireche, along the plains fringing the<br />
northern slopes of that range and the river valleys descending from<br />
there.The Qarakhanid appanages are associated with four principal<br />
urban centers: Balasaghun in Semireche, Kashgar in Sinkiang, Uzgend<br />
in Fergana, and Samarkand in Transoxania.<br />
Although we have emphasized the “Turkicness” of the Qarakhanids<br />
and what this meant for the destinies of Central Asia, we have also<br />
pointed out their fervor as new converts.Islam and its civilization<br />
flourished under this dynasty, a fact attested by the devoutness of the<br />
rulers, their deference to men of religion, the endowments they made to<br />
pious foundations, and the monuments of religious as well as utilitarian<br />
architecture with which they embellished their realms.Of the earliest<br />
examples of madrasas (Islamic theological seminaries) and hospitals, two<br />
were founded in Samarkand by Ibrahim I ibn Nasr Tamghach Khan<br />
(1053–68).Some other Qarakhanid structures are still standing,<br />
however: the most famous are a minaret built by the side of the main<br />
mosque of Bukhara in 1127, and three mausolea in Uzgend.The latter<br />
are not as intact as the above-mentioned Samanid mausoleum in<br />
Bukhara – only the frontal parts are preserved – but two inscriptions<br />
have survived on the northern mausoleum dated 1152; one is in Arabic,<br />
the other in Persian. 1 The former, in the Kufic script of the Arabic<br />
alphabet, reads: “The just, the very great khaqan Jalal al-dunya wa ‘ldin<br />
Alp Kilich Tonga Bilgä Türk Toghrul Qara Khaqan al-Husayn ibn<br />
al-Hasan ibn Ali, God’s elect, helper of al-Nasir, Commander of the<br />
Faithful, the King.” The other inscription, in the decorative naskh script<br />
of the Arabic alphabet, reads: “The construction of [this] mausoleum<br />
began on Wednesday 4 Rabi II of the year 547 of the hijra of Mustafa<br />
Muhammad the Prophet, God’s greetings be upon Him and upon His<br />
family and all His companions.The [ultimate] kingdom is God’s.”<br />
On the cultural level, the Iranian citizens of Central Asia still continued<br />
to play a dominant role (although Arabic and Persian must have<br />
ceded primacy to Turkic as the language spoken by the new ruling elite).<br />
This is exemplified, at the turn of the millennium and in the first decades<br />
of the eleventh century, by the appearance of three towering figures in<br />
the three principal areas of Central Asia: Ibn Sina (980–1037) in<br />
Transoxania, Biruni (973–1050) in Khwarazm, and the already men-<br />
1 A.Yu.Yakubovskiy, “Dve nadpisi na severnom mavzolee 1152 g.v Uzgende,” Epigrafika Vostoka 1<br />
(1947): 27–32.
86 A history of Inner Asia<br />
tioned Firdawsi (ca.934–1020) in Khurasan.They all eventually left<br />
their hometowns and went to serve other societies and rulers: Ibn Sina<br />
the Buwayhids in Persia, Biruni and Firdawsi the Ghaznavids in<br />
Afghanistan and India.Ibn Sina wrote in Arabic, Biruni in Arabic and<br />
Persian, Firdawsi in Persian; in this respect they were typical of the<br />
Islamic civilization flourishing in Central Asia of their time.<br />
Ibn Sina, 2 born near Bukhara and educated in the Samanid capital,<br />
was a philosopher and physician whose magnum opus, al-Qanun fi al-tibb,<br />
became one of the most widely used medical textbooks of the Middle<br />
Ages in Islam and Christendom; to Europeans the author became<br />
known as Avicenna, and his work was translated as Canon into Latin by<br />
Gerard of Cremona (1114–87).Even more significantly, it went through<br />
fifteen printed editions during the half-century after the invention of<br />
printing in 1453.This in turn led to a new translation by Andrea Alpago<br />
in 1527, and it was still part of the curriculum at medical schools for at<br />
least another century, besides attracting the attention of the first stirrings<br />
of Orientalist scholarship which resulted in a printed edition of the<br />
Arabic original at Rome in 1593.<br />
Ibn Sina’s life falls into two distinct phases: his formative years in<br />
Bukhara, where he lived until the age of nineteen; and the years of professional<br />
and public service, mainly in Isfahan and Hamadan.He eventually<br />
began to write an autobiography which was then completed by his<br />
disciple Abu Ubayd al-Juzjani.Excerpts from the early part convey the<br />
human and cultural atmosphere in this core of Central Asia on the eve<br />
of the substitution of Turkic for Persian rule:<br />
My father was originally from Balkh.He moved from there to Bukhara in the<br />
days of the amir Nuh ibn Mansur [976–97] and held civil service posts during<br />
the latter’s reign in a town of the Bukhara district called Kharmayshan.In a<br />
nearby village called Afshana my father married my mother, settled there and<br />
had children: I was born first, then five years later my brother.Subsequently we<br />
moved to Bukhara. 3<br />
Ibn Sina then tells about the schooling he received from men whom<br />
his father had hired for that purpose, with a recurring and intensifying<br />
theme: the pupil quickly surpassed his masters and increasingly became<br />
an autodidact, avidly reading most worthwhile books he could lay hands<br />
on.The following episode is characteristic:<br />
2 W.E.Gohlman, The Life of Ibn Sina (Albany, 1974; a critical edition and annotated translation of<br />
Avicenna’s autobiography). 3 Ibid., pp. 16 ff.
The Qarakhanids 87<br />
I read the book of Metaphysics [by Aristotle] but did not understand its content<br />
...One day at the time of the afternoon prayer I happened to be in the [street<br />
of] the booksellers, and there appeared a broker with a tome in his hand searching<br />
for a buyer.He accosted me, but I impatiently brushed him off.He said:<br />
“Buy it, for its owner needs money and it is cheap.You can have it for three<br />
dirhams.” So I bought it, and it turned out to be Abu Nasr al-Farabi’s commentary<br />
on the Metaphysics.I returned home and read it forthwith, and the meaning<br />
of [Aristotle’s] book opened itself up to me, for I had memorized it by heart.<br />
Ibn Sina’s curiosity was all-embracing, as we can see from the following<br />
passage:<br />
I read books – originals as well as commentaries – in the fields of natural sciences<br />
and theology, and the gates of knowledge kept opening before me.Then<br />
I became interested in medicine, and read books on that subject.Medicine is<br />
not one of the difficult sciences, so that I quickly excelled in it to the point where<br />
expert doctors began to consult with me.I examined the sick, and discovered<br />
countless types of treatment on the basis of experience ...I was then sixteen<br />
years old ...At that point the reigning sultan in Bukhara, Nuh ibn Mansur, was<br />
struck by an illness which baffled the physicians.The renown of my name had<br />
spread among them by then, and they asked him to summon me before his presence.I<br />
came and joined them in treating him, and became distinguished in his<br />
service.<br />
Significantly, the greatest reward for treating the ruler was not money<br />
but permission to use the royal library:<br />
One day I asked him to grant me access to their library [dar kutubihim] and<br />
inspect it and read what it contained.He did, and I was ushered into a building<br />
with many rooms, each of which had boxes with stacks of books.One room<br />
had books on the Arabic language and poetry, another books on jurisprudence,<br />
and so forth, each room being reserved for a specific category.I consulted the<br />
catalog of the classics (fihrist kutub al-awa’il) and requested what I needed.Some<br />
of the books, by authors whose names were known to few people, I had not seen<br />
before and never would see again.I read these books and benefited from them.<br />
By the time I reached the age of eighteen, I had finished [studying] all these<br />
sciences.<br />
The takeover by a Turkic elite represented by the Qarakhanids did<br />
not change the essentially Iranian character of Central Asian culture,<br />
but aside from setting in motion an inexorable demographic and ethnolinguistic<br />
shift, it meant that some of the new rulers were sophisticated<br />
men fully aware of their separate identity and became ready to formulate<br />
this awareness in scholarly or literary terms.One proof of this is the<br />
Diwan lughat al-Turk, or Dictionary of Languages [spoken by] Turks, written
88 A history of Inner Asia<br />
between 1072 and 1077 by Mahmud ibn al-Husayn ibn Muhammad,<br />
better known as Mahmud Kashgari, probably a member of the<br />
Qarakhanid dynasty. 4 Mahmud Kashgari hailed originally from<br />
Barskhan or Barskoon, the aforementioned Silk Road way station near<br />
the southeastern shore of Issyk-kul (thus from what is today the core area<br />
of Kyrgyzstan), and he may have lived some time in Kashgar at the<br />
Qarakhanid court.His work suggests that he drew on personal experience<br />
from his original homeland through extensive travels, thereby<br />
acquiring a thorough knowledge of other Turkic dialects and of the folk<br />
customs of Inner Asia.At the same time, the fact that the rich repertoire<br />
of Turkic words, phrases, and samples from folk poetry is discussed in<br />
Arabic – hence also the Arabic title of the dictionary – suggests that the<br />
author had received a solid Islamic education, which invariably started<br />
with the Koran.Today, the Divanu lugat it-Türk is a priceless document<br />
for the linguistic and anthropological study of Inner Asia’s Turkic populations<br />
in Qarakhanid times.In certain respects it can be compared to<br />
the Shahname, composed by Firdawsi two generations earlier.Both are<br />
masterpieces and testimonies of the dedication of two great minds, a<br />
scholar and a poet, to their respective cultures, Turkic and Iranian,<br />
emerging from civilizations hitherto dominated by their inspired Arab<br />
element.The parallel, however, ends here, and the differences between<br />
the two works also deserve attention.Aside from the obvious contrast in<br />
subject matter (one is a lexical and philological treatise, the other an epic<br />
poem), the Diwan was little noticed by the Turks – let alone by the<br />
Persians or Arabs – and has survived in a unique manuscript.The<br />
Shahname, on the other hand, went through countless copies and redactions,<br />
many illustrated, and pervaded the thoughts and even actions of<br />
virtually all Persians.In fact, over the centuries it even became a part of<br />
the cultural patrimony of educated Turks.What conclusion can we draw<br />
from these parallels and contrasts? The Diwan is a testimony to the<br />
natural vigor of the Turkic element in Inner Asia, while the Shahname<br />
also attests the fact that on the level of high literary culture the Turks for<br />
a long time acknowledged the dominant position of the Persians.<br />
Central Asia would over the centuries become to a considerable degree<br />
Turkicized, but culturally the Turks came close to becoming Persianized<br />
4 The dictionary has been published by B.Atalay as Divanu lugat-it-Türk (Ankara, 1939–57), 6 vols.,<br />
followed by a modern Turkish translation: Divanu lugat-it-Türk tercümesi (Ankara, 1985–86), 4 vols.<br />
An English translation of the Arabic part with a transliteration and translation of the Turkic segments,<br />
with a thorough introduction and analysis, by R.Dankoff and J.Kelly has appeared as<br />
Compendium of the Turkic Dialects (Cambridge, Mass., 1982–85), 3 vols. vol. 1, parts 1–3 (1982–85).
The Qarakhanids 89<br />
or, in certain respects, Arabicized: it was Arab lexicographers and philologists<br />
who served Mahmud Kashgari as inspiration and model.<br />
The Diwan is primarily what it claims to be: a Turkic–Arabic dictionary,<br />
with the Arabic part often expanded into a lengthy excursus.Besides<br />
the fact that it is a treasure-trove of Turkic lexicography and ethnography,<br />
the circumstances of its composition are also significant.The<br />
author wrote the Diwan in Baghdad during the last three years of the<br />
reign of the Abbasid caliph al-Qaim (1031–75) and the first two years of<br />
that of al-Muqtadi (1075–94), dedicating it to the latter.In 1055, the<br />
Seljukid sultan Tughril I had entered Baghdad and “freed” the Abbasid<br />
caliph from the tutelage of the Shii and Persian Buwayhids; the grateful<br />
caliph gave the Turk his daughter in marriage and bestowed upon him<br />
the title Malik al-Mashriq wa-al-Maghrib, “King of the East and West,”<br />
thus officially delegating temporal power to him.This act consecrated a<br />
historic transformation in the Islamic Middle East, passage of effective<br />
power from the Arabo-Persian elites and armies to those of the Turks.<br />
The dynasty of the Seljukids, which was the trailblazer of this transformation,<br />
will be discussed below; here we wish to point out that it<br />
belonged to the ethnolinguistic group of Turkic tribes known as Oghuz,<br />
whereas the Qarakhanids belonged to a less comprehensively defined<br />
group whose most prominent tribes were the Qarluq, Tukhsi, Chigil,<br />
and Yaghma.The official or court language at Kashgar and other<br />
Qarakhanid centers, which Mahmud al-Kashgari often calls Khaqani,<br />
“Royal,” was partly based on the dialects spoken by these tribes, while<br />
also possessing the qualities of linear descent from Kök and Uighur<br />
Turkic; the “Türk” script displayed in the introductory part of the<br />
Diwan, for example, is that of the contemporary Uighur kingdom of<br />
Qocho.The term Türk, as used by Mahmud Kashgari, thus appears to<br />
have had two partly overlapping meanings.Türk, we have seen, was the<br />
name of the core group that created the empire of the Kök Turks.This<br />
suggests that the prestige of that empire had a lasting effect by spreading<br />
the name of the chief constituent group throughout the world of its<br />
ethnolinguistic kinsmen – as exemplified by the dictionary’s title.At the<br />
same time, the author also uses it as an implicit eastern counterpart to<br />
the western dialects, those of the Oghuz and Kipchak groups; in other<br />
words, as a term that included the Qarakhanid “Khaqani” or court language<br />
and the eastern dialects on which it was based.<br />
It is not known why Mahmud Kashgari moved to Baghdad, thus<br />
leaving his Turkic homeland and a kingdom ruled by his relatives, for an<br />
alien land ruled by a Turkic but foreign dynasty.We may infer, however,
90 A history of Inner Asia<br />
that the new, essentially Arab milieu made him that much more keenly<br />
aware of the importance of the role Turks had begun to play in the<br />
Islamic world.The Sunni caliph now depended on protection provided<br />
by the Sunni Turks, and in 1071 – just two years before the lexicographer<br />
began work on his dictionary – the Seljukid sultan Alp Arslan had<br />
defeated the Byzantine emperor Romanos Diogenes at Manzikert in<br />
eastern Anatolia.Mahmud Kashgari also knew the rich philological literature<br />
devoted to the Arabic language produced by Arabs and non-<br />
Arabs alike, including Farabi’s Diwan al-adab fi bayan lughat al-Arab,<br />
“Literary dictionary explaining the language of the Arabs.” In contrast,<br />
there was little or nothing on Turkic, and we can thus visualize how the<br />
sophisticated and perhaps somewhat homesick Qarakhanid scholararistocrat<br />
decided to compose his priceless work.The introduction is<br />
revealing: 5<br />
The slave, 6 Mahmud ibn al-Husayn ibn Muhammad, states: When I saw that<br />
God Most High had caused the Sun of Fortune to rise in the Zodiac of the<br />
Turks, and set their Kingdom among the spheres of Heaven; that he called<br />
them “Türk,” and gave them rule; making them Kings of the Age, and placing<br />
in their hands the reins of temporal authority; appointing them over all<br />
mankind, and directing them to righteousness; that He strengthened those who<br />
are affiliated to them, and those who endeavor on their behalf; so that they<br />
attain from them the utmost of their desire, and are delivered from the ignominy<br />
of the slavish rabble; – [then I saw that] every man of reason must attach<br />
himself to them, or else expose himself to their falling arrows.And there is no<br />
better way to approach them than by speaking their own tongue, thereby<br />
bending their ear, and inclining their heart.And when one of their foes comes<br />
over to their side, they keep him secure from fear of them; then others may take<br />
refuge with him, and all fear of harm be gone!… I heard from one of the trustworthy<br />
informants among the Imams of Bukhara, and from another Imam of<br />
the people of Nishapur; both of them reported the following tradition (hadith),<br />
and both had a chain of transmissions going back to the Messenger of God,<br />
may God bless him and grant him peace.When he was speaking about the signs<br />
of the Hour and the trials of the end of Time, and he mentioned the emergence<br />
of the Oghuz Turks, he said: “Learn the tongue of the Turks, for their<br />
reign will be long!” Now if this hadith is sound – and the burden of proof is on<br />
those two [transmitters] – then learning [this language] is a religious duty; and<br />
if it [i.e. the hadith] is not sound, still wisdom demands it.<br />
I have travelled through their cities and steppes, and have learned their<br />
dialects and their rhymes: those of the Turks, the Turkman-Oghuz, the Chigil,<br />
the Yaghma, and the Kyrgyz.Also, I am one of the most elegant among them<br />
in language, and the most eloquent in speech; one of the best educated, the<br />
5 Dankoff and Kelly, Compendium, vol.I, pp.70–1. 6 The meaning is “the slave of God.”
The Qarakhanids 91<br />
most deep-rooted in lineage, and the most penetrating in throwing the lance.<br />
Thus I have acquired perfectly the dialect of each one of their groups; and I<br />
have set it down in an encompassing book, in a well-ordered system.I wrote<br />
this, my book, asking the assistance of God Most High; and I have named it<br />
Diwan lughat al-Turk, in order that it be an everlasting memorial, and an eternal<br />
treasure; and I have dedicated it to His Excellence, of the Hallowed and<br />
Prophetic, Imami, Hashimi, Abbasid line: our Master and Patron, Abu l-Qasim<br />
Abdallah ibn Muhammad al-Muqtadi bi-Amrillah, Amir of the Believers and<br />
Deputy of the Lord of Worlds.<br />
Another example is the term “Türk” itself.After offering one of the conventional<br />
definitions based on the Koranic version of the Bible (“Türk:<br />
the name of a son of Noah; this name was subsequently passed on to<br />
Noah’s son Türk’s progeny”), Mahmud Kashgari discusses various<br />
aspects of this name, and one of the passages is in the form of a hadith,<br />
the classical statement attributed to the Prophet Muhammad:<br />
We have said that the Lord Himself bestowed the name Türk [on these people],<br />
for [this can be deduced from ] a statement traced back to the Noble Prophet<br />
[Muhammad] ...who said: “The Lord says: I have a host whom I have called<br />
Turks and whom I have set in the East; whenever I become wroth at a people,<br />
I make [the Turks] masters over them.” This reveals that Turks are superior to<br />
all other beings.For the Lord took it upon Himself to give them a name.He<br />
placed them in the loftiest location in the world, in regions with the purest air<br />
and has called them “My own army.” Moreover, one can observe among them<br />
such praiseworthy qualities as beauty, friendliness, good taste, good manners,<br />
filial piety, loyalty, simplicity, modesty, dignity, bravery. 7<br />
Contemporaneously with the political and linguistic Turkicization of<br />
Central Asia that began under the Qarakhanids, a related process began<br />
about the same time farther south and southwest, thus closer to the<br />
Islamic heartland.As we have said, by 1055 that heartland was under<br />
the dominance of the Seljukids; we shall discuss this process below, but<br />
here we want to emphasize the Persian culture, political as well as literary,<br />
of the Seljukid dynasty.A remarkable illustration of this Turco-<br />
Persian symbiosis is the Siyasetname, a book on the art of government<br />
written in Persian by Nizam al-Mulk.As the principal minister of the<br />
Seljukid sultan Malikshah (1072–92), the Persian Nizam al-Mulk was<br />
active chiefly in Baghdad; this city retained its prestige as the seat of the<br />
Abbasid caliph, who continued to rule as the spiritual head of the<br />
Muslim community, though under the authority of the Turkic sultan.<br />
7 Dankoff and Kelly, Compendium, vol.I, p.274.The Arabic version of this remarkable hadith is as<br />
follows: “Yaqulu Allah jalla wa-azza: Inna li jundan sammaytuhum al-Turk, wa-askantuhum al-mashriqa; faidha<br />
ghadibtu ala qawmin sallattuhum alayhim.”
92 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Significantly, an analogous work appeared among the Qarakhanids: the<br />
Qutadghu Bilig (“The Wisdom of Felicity”), a didactic poem written in<br />
Turkic by Yusuf of Balasaghun, the “Khass Hajib” or personal secretary<br />
of the Qarakhanid ruler.Dated to 1069, it is a near-contemporary of<br />
Mahmud Kashgari’s dictionary, and predates by a few years Nizam al-<br />
Mulk’s work.We can discern several characteristic strains in the Qutadghu<br />
Bilig: one is an Islamic religious veneer, for the author opens with the customary<br />
formulas of praise of God and Muhammad; another is a<br />
politico-philosophical substance, drawing on two different but mutually<br />
complementary systems: Iranian traditions of kingship and relationship<br />
between the sovereign, his ministers, and the people (it is in the sovereign’s<br />
interest to rule justly), and Turkic principles of the ruler’s duty to<br />
rule justly (because the heavenly mandate that makes his rule legitimate<br />
also makes him accountable for his actions and responsible for the<br />
people’s welfare); and a third veneer, local color, expressed above all in<br />
the poem’s Turkic language, but also in the delightful portrayals of the<br />
author’s and his Turkic compatriots’ homeland: the awakening of<br />
nature in the springtime, the boisterous joy of living creatures, the<br />
passing of a Silk Road caravan on its way from China.Like Mahmud of<br />
Kashgar, Yusuf of Balasaghun eloquently asserted his ethnic identity by<br />
giving his work a Turkic form and setting.We have already mentioned<br />
the efforts of some Qarakhanid rulers to rule justly, which are evident<br />
from their pious foundations and behavior; the Qutadghu Bilig is another<br />
illustration of the political and cultural climate characteristic of this first<br />
Turkic dynasty to rule Islamic Central Asia.<br />
The Qutadghu Bilig has survived in three undated manuscripts.Arabic<br />
script was used for two of these, but the third is in the Uighur alphabet.<br />
Internal evidence suggests that it was copied in the Timurid period<br />
(fifteenth century), when that script received new currency thanks to the<br />
ubiquity of Uighur bakhshis in the nomadic monarchs’ chanceries, or<br />
even to a certain Turkic pride among the elite.Today this didactic poem<br />
ranks among the priceless monuments of Turkic antiquity, cherished by<br />
linguists as well as by cultural and social historians.
chapter six<br />
Seljukids and Ghaznavids<br />
The turn of the millennium inaugurated in the originally Iranian part<br />
of Central Asia, as we have said, the rule of dynasties that issued from<br />
among Inner Asian nomads, primarily Turkic but soon also Mongol.A<br />
similar process began farther southwest and southeast, thus in the<br />
central lands of Islam and on the Indian subcontinent, where Seljukid<br />
and Ghaznavid dynasties came to power.Whereas, however, in Central<br />
Asia this process led to a permanent change and large-scale<br />
Turkicization of the populations, this did not happen elsewhere – with<br />
a few exceptions, the most notable being Turkey itself.In Iraq, Iran, and<br />
Afghanistan, to name just the core lands affected by this change, native<br />
dynasties or governments soon or eventually reassumed power, and the<br />
process of Turkicization, if at all noticeable, gave ground to a<br />
reaffirmation of Iranian or Arab demographic, cultural, and political<br />
realities.<br />
The subject is relevant to our topic for several reasons.Both the dynasties<br />
mentioned originated in Central Asia, and their scions spoke Turkic;<br />
the staging area for their push into the heartlands of Islam and India was<br />
the province of Khurasan; and they had protracted and complex relations<br />
with the Qarakhanids.The Seljukids never relinquished<br />
Khurasan: they won it by 1040 in the historic battle of Dandanqan with<br />
the Ghaznavids; and the last monarch of its senior branch, Sanjar, who<br />
ruled from 1118 to 1157, chose it a century later as his home province,<br />
with Merv as his capital and final resting place.<br />
Like the Qarakhanids, the Seljukids appeared in Central Asia during<br />
the tenth century, but farther west on the lower course of the Syr Darya,<br />
near the Aral Sea, and as members of a different group of Turkic tribes<br />
called Oghuz.The Oghuz moved westward into the steppes of western<br />
Eurasia after the collapse of the Kök Turkic qaghanate, and became the<br />
dominant nomadic element there.Unlike other Turks who had at times<br />
created great though ephemeral empires and impressive civilizations,<br />
93
94 A history of Inner Asia<br />
they seem to have stayed below that level prior to their entry into the Dar<br />
al-Islam.Their ruler did not style himself qaghan but yabghu, a lesser title<br />
in the complex hierarchy of Turkic royal titulature.Toward the turn of<br />
the first millennium, the Oghuz yabghu used the aforementioned town<br />
of Yangikant near the estuary of the Syr Darya as his winter quarters.<br />
The Turco-Sogdian name Yangikant appears in Arabic sources as<br />
Qarya haditha, 1 and in Persian ones as Dih-i naw, all three meaning<br />
“new town.” Jand farther upstream was another town paying taxes to<br />
the yabghu, and there were other settlements; they were peopled mainly<br />
by Muslims from across the river to the south, but some scholars view<br />
this symbiosis as a hint that the Turks themselves had shown some inclination<br />
toward settled and urban life.Like most other Turks of the time,<br />
the Oghuz were pagans, but qams or shamans and the idea of a principal<br />
deity, tengri, do seem to have played a role in their spiritual orbit.By<br />
1003, however, the yabghu had converted to Islam, boasting the thoroughly<br />
Muslim name Abu l-Fawaris Shah Malik ibn Ali; the last component<br />
(“son of Ali”) suggests that he may even have been born a<br />
Muslim.Concurrently with the yabghu’s family, however, another clan<br />
was adopting Islam: that of their subashi or military commander Seljuk,<br />
who gained the upper hand in Jand and freed its population from taxes<br />
paid to the yabghu.<br />
Seljuk’s three sons who reached maturity had the names Israil, Mikail,<br />
and Musa, probably an effect of the prestige the memory of the Khazar<br />
kingdom still had among the steppe nomads rather than an indication<br />
that they too had converted to Judaism.Their conversion to Islam<br />
proved more effective than that of the yabghu’s clan, a circumstance that<br />
must have contributed to the increased hostility between the two groups<br />
and gradual drift of the Seljuk clan southward into Muslim territories,<br />
at first into those of the Qarakhanids and Ghaznavids.There were other<br />
factors causing this important demographic, political, and socio-economic<br />
revolution, such as possible overpopulation in the steppes, vagaries<br />
of the climate, the concomitant tribal disturbances.Attraction of<br />
settled territories with rumored riches to plunder, and opportunities<br />
armed bands could find by hiring out their services to the strongest<br />
bidder must also have played a role.The group led by Seljuk’s three sons<br />
was among such condottieri, and their modest beginnings could hardly<br />
have presaged the glorious destiny decreed for their descendants as the<br />
1 I hope to be forgiven for mentioning an irrelevant but interesting detail: this Semitic form of<br />
“Newtown” can also be discerned in the name of Carthage.
Seljukids and Ghaznavids 95<br />
main political force in the Islamic Middle East for the next two centuries.<br />
The Seljukid clan, we have said, belonged to the Oghuz group of<br />
Turkic tribes.Before the great migration southward started, these tribes<br />
formed the majority of nomads in the steppes of what is today central<br />
and western Kazakhstan, in other words, in the eastern part of what<br />
subsequently came to be known as the Kipchak steppe.The Kipchak<br />
Turks were then occupying the western portions of this steppe, and only<br />
after the emigration of the Oghuz did they extend their presence into<br />
the latter’s territory.The Oghuz, also known in Islamic sources as<br />
Ghuzz, then became the permanent Turkic element in the Middle East,<br />
starting with Turkmenistan and ending with Turkey.It was also during<br />
this period of Oghuz migration and Islamization that the ethnonym<br />
Turkmen (more exactly Türkmän) began to gain currency.The implied<br />
nuance may thus have meant those Oghuz who had become Muslims.<br />
Gradually the name Turkmen (or Turcoman in European usage) prevailed<br />
and Oghuz has receded into the parlance of modern Turcology.<br />
The rise of Seljukid power was prodigious: from Khurasan they<br />
extended their rule over much of Iran, and over Iraq, Syria, and southern<br />
Caucasus; as we have pointed out while discussing Mahmud<br />
Kashgari, by 1055 – just fifteen years after the battle of Dandanqan –<br />
they had entered Baghdad, where, as we have said, the caliph had no<br />
choice but to name their leader, Tughril Beg, “Amir (or Malik) al-Sharq<br />
wa-al-Gharb” (“Commander of the East and West”), to give him his<br />
daughter in marriage, and to accept his tutelage, in return for the right<br />
to continue as the nominal head of the Muslim community.Another<br />
decade and a half later, in 1071, the Seljukid sultan Alp Arslan won the<br />
aforementioned historic battle against the Byzantine emperor Romanos<br />
Diogenes at Manzikert in eastern Anatolia – an event that opened the<br />
gate to Turkic penetration into Asia Minor and its eventual<br />
Turkicization and Islamization.The new empire was soon divided into<br />
several regional segments ruled by various members of the dynasty; this<br />
may have been an echo of the Inner Asian nomads’ concepts of family<br />
rather than individual rule, but geopolitical as well as psychological<br />
factors probably played a more decisive role here.Despite his brilliant<br />
victory against the Byzantines, Alp Arslan left further conquests in the<br />
west to junior members of the family and resolved to extend his realm<br />
in the opposite direction at the expense of the Qarakhanids.This cost<br />
him his life, for in 1072 he died during a campaign in Transoxania.<br />
His son and successor Malikshah (1072–92) fared better, for on his first
96 A history of Inner Asia<br />
campaign he reduced the Qarakhanid ruler of Transoxania to vassalage,<br />
and on his second expedition he even pushed into Sinkiang, where<br />
the Qarakhanids of Kashgar briefly acknowledged his suzerainty.That<br />
the latter success was so short-lived can again be ascribed to geopolitical<br />
factors.One might of course wonder why the Seljukids endeavored to<br />
impose their suzerainty on the Qarakhanids, fellow-Muslims and Turks<br />
like themselves, and who moreover never appeared to pose a major<br />
threat despite occasional claims to Khurasan. The expansiveness of a<br />
basically nomadic people might be one of the reasons; the proximity of<br />
Transoxania, a sister region to Khurasan, might be another; its economic<br />
prosperity under the just and successful administration of the<br />
Qarakhanids, yet another; and perhaps also rivalry with the<br />
Ghaznavids, the Seljuks’ neighbors to the east.<br />
It was thus these northeastern reaches of the Dar al-Islam, especially<br />
Khurasan, which the Great Seljuks – as the family’s senior branch is<br />
called by modern historians – considered the core of their possessions<br />
and place of residence.Of the junior branches, the Seljuks of Rum –<br />
Rum being the Islamic name for Anatolia – stand out for having outlived<br />
all the others and set in motion the process of Islamicizing and<br />
Turkicizing that country, thus of transforming it into Turkey.Meanwhile<br />
in Khurasan, Merv, the center of a flourishing agricultural region but<br />
also situated on one of the trunk lines of the Silk Road network, rose to<br />
the preeminent position of a capital and flourished more than ever as a<br />
center of culture, industry, and trade.Sultan Sanjar, the last Great<br />
Seljukid, chose it as his residence and built there a grandiose mausoleum<br />
for himself.His realm was thus powerful and prosperous: junior Seljukid<br />
branches ruled farther south and west; the once dangerous Ghaznavids<br />
had definitively oriented themselves toward India; and the Qarakhanids<br />
were vassals whose loyalty was further cemented by family ties.Yet<br />
Sanjar was to end his days a broken man, and his dynasty would founder<br />
soon after him.The causes of this dramatic collapse were complex, but<br />
a catalytic role may have been played by a defeat that Sanjar suffered in<br />
1141.We shall return to this event below, but first a few words about the<br />
Ghaznavids.<br />
Like the Qarakhanids and Seljukids, the Ghaznavids were Turks, with<br />
their roots among the nomads of Inner Asia, and they had recently converted<br />
to Islam.These parallels were accompanied, however, by<br />
differences symptomatic of the variables marking the period’s Islamic<br />
political structures.Whereas the first two dynasties established their<br />
authority as free families or clans by means of a successful regimenta-
Seljukids and Ghaznavids 97<br />
tion of tribes, the Ghaznavids came to power through a completely<br />
different channel: as slave soldiers of the Samanids.We have already<br />
mentioned the importance of ghulams, praetorian guards owned by<br />
Islamic rulers such as the Samanids and the Abbasid caliphs themselves;<br />
we have pointed out that in Islam’s eastern and central areas, these<br />
ghulams were mostly Turks, and that they gradually gained power to the<br />
point of controlling their masters or making themselves independent in<br />
the provinces that they were sent to govern.Such was the origin of the<br />
Ghaznavid Sebüktegin, a slave general who from 977 till his death<br />
twenty years later governed a growing array of territories in Afghanistan<br />
and Khurasan for the Samanids.The collapse of this dynasty a few years<br />
after Sebüktegin’s death enabled his son Mahmud (998–1030) not only<br />
to shed any acknowledgement of vassaldom but also to share the spoils<br />
with the Qarakhanids, Khurasan being the main prize.<br />
Mahmud of Ghazna and his first sucessors, Muhammad and Masud<br />
(1030–41), had lively relations with both the Qarakhanids and the<br />
Seljukids.Conflicts between the Ghaznavids and Qarakhanids were<br />
overshadowed by friendly contacts that sometimes included stately<br />
meetings between monarchs – such as between Mahmud of Ghazna<br />
and Qadir Khan of Kashgar in 1025 near Samarkand – and family alliances.Here<br />
is an excerpt from an account of the encounter, written in<br />
Persian by the Ghaznavid historian Gardizi: 2<br />
When Qadir Khan, who was the Chief of all Turkestan and its Great Khan,<br />
received the report that Yamin al-Dawla [i.e. Mahmud of Ghazna] had crossed<br />
the Jayhun, he set out from Kashgar in order to meet with him and conclude a<br />
new pact [ahd-i taza].He came to Samarkand and proceeded from there, with<br />
intentions of peace and friendship, until he was within a farsakh of the Amir<br />
Mahmud’s army.There he halted, ordered that tents be pitched, and sent<br />
envoys to inform Mahmud about his arrival and desire to see him. The Amir<br />
Mahmud responded positively and proposed a specific place where they would<br />
meet.Subsequently Amir Mahmud and Qadir Khan, each with a small cavalry<br />
retinue, arrived at that place.When they came within sight of each another,<br />
they dismounted; the Amir Mahmud gave a precious stone wrapped in a cloth<br />
to the treasurer and instructed him to deliver it into the hands of Qadir Khan.<br />
The latter had also come with a precious stone, but was so overawed that he<br />
forgot [to reciprocate]; only after the meeting had ended did he recall the stone,<br />
and had it hand-delivered by one of his attendants with expressions of apology.<br />
The next day the Amir Mahmud ordered a large tent of embroidered satin<br />
[khayma-i buzurg az diba-yi mansuj] to be pitched, and everything to be prepared<br />
2 Zayn al-akhbar, ed.Habibi (Tehran, 1347/1968), pp.406–10; Barthold, Turkestan, English translation<br />
on pp.282–4.
98 A history of Inner Asia<br />
for an entertainment; he then sent a messenger to Qadir Khan inviting him to<br />
be his guest.When Qadir Khan arrived, Mahmud ordered the banquet to be<br />
arranged as magnificently as possible; the two then ate together at the same<br />
table.After the meal they went to the hall of gaiety [majlis-i tarab]; it was splendidly<br />
adorned with rare flowers, delicate fruits, precious stones, gold-embroidered<br />
fabrics, crystal, beautiful mirrors and [other] rare objects, so that Qadir<br />
Khan could not regain his composure.They remained seated for some time.<br />
Qadir Khan drank no wine, as it is not customary for the kings of Transoxania,<br />
especially the Turkic kings, to do so.They listened to music for a while, then<br />
[Qadir Khan] rose.Thereupon the Amir Mahmud ordered presents to be<br />
brought, namely, gold and silver goblets, precious stones, rarities from Baghdad,<br />
fine fabrics, costly weapons, valuable horses with gold bridles and sticks studded<br />
with precious stones, ten she-elephants with gold ornaments and goads studded<br />
with jewels; mules from Bardhaa with gold trappings, litters for journeys by<br />
camel with girths, gold and silver sticks and bells, also litters of embroidered<br />
satin; valuable fabrics and carpets, of Armenian work, as well as uwaysi and<br />
parti-colored carpets; embroidered headbands; rose-colored stamped stuffs<br />
from Tabaristan; Indian swords, Qamari aloes, Maqasiri sandal wood, grey<br />
amber, she-asses, skins of Barbary panthers, hunting dogs, falcons and eagles<br />
trained to hunt cranes, antelopes and other game.He saw Qadir Khan off with<br />
great ceremony, showing him many favors and apologizing [for the inadequacy<br />
of his entertainment and presents].On returning to his camp and examining<br />
all these precious things, jewels, arms and riches, Qadir Khan was filled with<br />
astonishment and did not know how to requite him for them.Then he ordered<br />
the treasurer to open the door of the treasury, took thence much money and<br />
sent it to Mahmud, together with the products of Turkestan, namely fine horses<br />
with gold trappings, Turkic slaves with gold belts and quivers, falcons and gerfalcons,<br />
sable, miniver, ermine and fox furs, vessels of the skins of two sheep<br />
with horns of the khutuw, Chinese satin and so forth.Both sovereigns parted<br />
entirely satisfied, in peace and amity.<br />
With the Seljukids, on the other hand, the rivalry knew no compromise,<br />
and the Ghaznavids were the losers; it was their aforementioned<br />
defeat at Dandanqan (a site in Turkmenistan, some 70 km southwest of<br />
Merv), in 1040 that definitively deflected their efforts away from Central<br />
Asia toward India.<br />
By the time Sultan Sanjar came to power in 1118, then, the Seljukid<br />
empire seemed firmly established and, if the lateral branches of the<br />
family as well as the vassal states are included, it was the most extensive<br />
realm that Islam had known since the heyday of the Umayyad and<br />
Abbasid caliphates: from Transoxania in the northeast to Iran, Iraq, part<br />
of Syria, and a good deal of Anatolia.In 1141, however, the sultan<br />
suffered a defeat whose consequences may not at first sight have seemed<br />
too disastrous, for all that it cost him was Transoxania.Its delayed effect
Seljukids and Ghaznavids 99<br />
was, however, more serious; and with the benefit of hindsight, we can<br />
add that it portended a terrible calamity.<br />
The conquerors who invaded Transoxania and defeated Sanjar were<br />
the Qarakhitay, descendants of the aforementioneed Khitan who had<br />
two centuries earlier invaded northern China and, adopting the dynastic<br />
name of Liao, founded their own state there.By 1125, however, that<br />
scenario was replayed when another invader from the northeast, the<br />
Tungus Jürchen, drove out the Khitan and ruled northern China under<br />
the dynastic name of Chin.A substantial number of the Khitan<br />
migrated westward, approximately following the northern Silk Road,<br />
and gained strength to the point of defeating an eastern Qarakhanid<br />
khan in Sinkiang a mere three years after their ouster from China.It was<br />
then the turn of the western Qarakhanids and of their suzerain, Sanjar.<br />
The sultan and his vassals met them on the Qatvan steppe, a short distance<br />
to the northeast of Samarkand, in 1141.The Khitan soundly beat<br />
them, and Sanjar barely escaped.<br />
To Islamic historians, these western Khitan (who probably spoke a<br />
Mongol language) came to be known as Qarakhitay, and they were as<br />
much a puzzle to them as they are to modern historians.The<br />
Qarakhitay allowed some of the Qarakhanids to continue their rule as<br />
vassals, and themselves lived in Semireche with their headquarters,<br />
remembered by the Turco-Mongol name of Ordubaliq, near<br />
Balasaghun.The Uighur idiqut of Turfan too acknowledged their suzerainty,<br />
as did the Qarluq rulers of Almaliq and Qayaliq.The Khitan<br />
were partially Sinicized by the time the Jürchen drove them out of<br />
China, and they retained that veneer throughout their second incarnation:<br />
the sources mention only the Chinese form of their names, and<br />
their coins have Chinese legends; and despite their relatively long rule of<br />
eighty years in a mostly Muslim territory, they never converted to Islam.<br />
Living under infidel rule is anathema to Muslims, yet Muslim historians<br />
grudgingly concede that the Qarakhitay were surprisingly fair-minded<br />
and tolerant rulers.<br />
With the benefit of hindsight, however, we can say that there was<br />
something sinister about the manner in which the Qarakhitay defeated<br />
Sanjar and his allies in 1141.The newcomers had despite their Chinese<br />
veneer remained essentially steppe nomads, and they overcame the<br />
larger host of a Turkic monarch who had in contrast become more<br />
accultured to the ways of Near Eastern sedentaries and their manner<br />
of fighting.Greater mobility, together with superior maneuvering of<br />
cavalry and archers, carried the day for the Qarakhitay.The same
100 A history of Inner Asia<br />
assets, increased many times over through superb planning, discipline,<br />
and concentration of troops at critical points, would a century later<br />
make the Mongols of Genghis Khan and his successors the greatest conquerors<br />
in history.<br />
The Qarakhitay contented themselves, however, with the aforementioned<br />
arrangement after their victory, and that enabled the last two generations<br />
of Qarakhanids to outlast their erstwhile Seljuk overlords and<br />
carry on almost down to the Mongol invasion.Almost, but not quite: for<br />
Sanjar’s defeat and the collapse of the Great Seljuks gave a freer rein to<br />
the perennial Khwarazmshahs, who in their delta oasis kingdom found<br />
new energy for expansion into former Seljuk territories.At first,<br />
however, they had to free themselves from Qarakhitay domination, for<br />
they too had been compelled to submit and pay regular tribute.The<br />
Khwarazmshah Ala al-Din Muhammad (1200–20) did so in two stages:<br />
he eliminated the Qarakhitay’s Qarakhanid vassal of Samarkand, and<br />
he then defeated the Qarakhitay themselves, who had set out to counter<br />
the upstart.This happened in 1210, and from then on Muhammad<br />
turned his main attention westward toward the heartland of the Dar al-<br />
Islam, driven by the ambition to upstage the Seljuks and in his turn<br />
become the “protector” of the caliph in Baghdad (or, according to some<br />
sources, to rid Islam of the Sunni caliph and install himself as the champion<br />
of the legitimacy of the Ahl al-Bayt, the Prophet’s descendants symbolized<br />
by the hidden mahdi, the Khwarazmshah having espoused the<br />
Shii cause for that purpose).Ala al-Din Muhammad almost succeeded,<br />
for much of Iran fell to him, and he was on the verge of the final push<br />
into Iraq when alarming news from Central Asia demanded his immediate<br />
return.<br />
By then, in 1218, both the Qarakhanids and their overlords the<br />
Qarakhitay – who despite their failure against the Khwarazmshah<br />
Muhammad had maintained themselves in Semireche – had been overthrown<br />
by Küchlüg.The son of the defeated chief of the Nayman tribe,<br />
Küchlüg had fled with its remnants from Genghis Khan’s Mongols, and<br />
gained strength to the point of substituting his rule for that of the<br />
Qarakhitay.Converting to Buddhism through the influence of his<br />
Qarakhitay wife, Küchlüg began to terrorize the by then devoutly<br />
Muslim inhabitants of western Sinkiang.He eventually also attacked<br />
and killed the Qarluq ruler of the city of Almaliq, however, and this<br />
proved to be his doom, for the victim’s son appealed to the Mongols for<br />
help.Küchlüg fled before an advance party led by the general (noyon)<br />
Jebe, but was overtaken and killed while seeking refuge in the Pamir
Seljukids and Ghaznavids 101<br />
mountains.His case is significant chiefly because it more quickly<br />
attracted Genghis Khan’s attention to Inner Asia’s western marches.<br />
This event brings us to the cataclysmic turning point of Inner Asian<br />
history, the rise of the Mongol empire of Genghis Khan.
Moscow<br />
Russian Principalities<br />
GOLDEN HORDE<br />
(Mongols of Russia)<br />
Saray<br />
Karakorum<br />
Black<br />
Sea<br />
Ta-tu<br />
Seljuks<br />
Almaliq<br />
Y Ü A N<br />
(Mongols of China)<br />
ULUS CHAGHATAY<br />
(Mongols of Central Asia)<br />
Caspian<br />
Sea<br />
Mediterranean<br />
Sea<br />
Pacific<br />
Ocean<br />
ILKHANIDS<br />
(Mongols of Iran)<br />
ARABIA<br />
INDIA<br />
Mongol Empire<br />
(ca. 1294)<br />
Map 3 Mongol Empire, ca.1294
chapter seven<br />
The conquering Mongols<br />
Few historical events can illustrate the unpredictability of the future as<br />
vividly as the sudden rise of Genghis Khan’s Mongol empire in the<br />
second and third decades of the thirteenth century.The energy and<br />
genius of the relatively small number of people who were at the core of<br />
this enterprise have baffled all historians trying to explain the phenomenon,<br />
just as the effects, ranging from horrifying massacres and devastations<br />
to periods of admirable cross-cultural exchange and stimulation,<br />
have never ceased repelling and attracting them.<br />
The effects of the Mongol invasion and rule were complex and, as we<br />
have implied, of varying type and degree across the vast swath of<br />
Eurasia they covered.Three areas and civilizations, however, can be<br />
singled out as having been affected far more radically than the rest:<br />
China, Central Asia, and Russia.In all three, history can be broken<br />
down into two periods, pre-Mongol and post-Mongol.<br />
The first enigma of the Mongol phenomenon is the relative<br />
insignificance of the tribes and territories where Genghis Khan had<br />
arisen.We have dwelt on Mongolia during its “Turkic” period, the sixth<br />
through tenth centuries; a contemporary observer could with some legitimacy<br />
have characterized Mongolia as the real and original Turkestan,<br />
land of the Turks, whether Kök Turks, Uighurs, Kyrgyz, or an amorphous<br />
conglomerate of contending tribes.Once the Kyrgyz had lost<br />
interest in Mongolia and withdrawn to their homeland in southern<br />
Siberia, and the Khitan lost theirs thanks to their transformation into a<br />
Chinese dynasty – both of which developments took place in the tenth<br />
century – Mongolia became a country of nomads, mainly Turkic,<br />
grouped into tribes but lacking any larger political cohesion or cultural<br />
dynamism.The script of the Orkhon valley was forgotten, the<br />
Manichaeism of the Uighurs was gone, and the incipient cities and agriculture<br />
had receded.Nevertheless, the very fluidity of the situation<br />
exposed the tribes living there to external influences.Trade was not<br />
103
104 A history of Inner Asia<br />
absent, and the geo-economic position of Inner Asia meant that some<br />
of it was long-distance trade passing through Mongolia.Manichaeism<br />
may have disappeared, but Christianity made some headway among<br />
such Turkic tribes as the Kereit, Merkit and Öngüt.The fact that it was<br />
the Nestorian denomination rather than, say, the Roman Catholic or<br />
even Orthodox or Jacobite ones was no accident: there had been a<br />
Nestorian bishopric in Merv, and Nestorianism too could spread from<br />
there along the special avenue that was the Silk Road network.<br />
Such was the situation until the second half of the twelfth century and<br />
the appearance of Temujin, the future Genghis Khan.The country was<br />
still more Turkic than Mongol, especially its central and western part,<br />
with the Tula and Orkhon rivers as the delimiters.East of there, along<br />
the Onon and Kerulen rivers all the way to the longitudinal Khingan<br />
mountains that separate Mongolia from Manchuria, lived tribes speaking<br />
Mongolian languages: the Tatars and those among whom we find<br />
some calling themselves Mongols.Both groups, along with many Turkic<br />
ones, are mentioned in Chinese sources as factors in the border politics<br />
of northern China; there, the Liao dynasty of the Khitan had succumbed<br />
to another invader from the northeast: the aforementioned<br />
Tungus Jürchen, who by 1125 had established their own Chinese<br />
dynasty, the Chin (“Golden”), with Beijing as the capital (or more<br />
exactly, a city whose successor began to be called Beijing, “Northern<br />
capital,” only after 1368 in the Ming period, in contrast to this dynasty’s<br />
southern capital, Nanjing).<br />
Temujin was born probably in 1167.After a youth of extreme hardship<br />
and struggle just to survive, he emerged as the leader of a growing<br />
coalition of clans and tribes – first Mongol, then increasingly also<br />
Turkic.By 1206 he was acclaimed at the quriltay, a diet of tribal leaders<br />
convened along the upper course of the Onon, as Genghis Khan, their<br />
undisputed ruler.The title “Genghis” is still a matter of debate among<br />
scholars, although most seem to agree that it probably had the connotation<br />
of “oceanic” and thus “world-embracing.”<br />
Almost at once Genghis Khan launched campaigns aimed at lands<br />
beyond Mongolia: northward into Kyrgyz and Oirat country on the<br />
upper Yenisei, southwestward against the Tangut kingdom of Hsi-Hsia,<br />
and southeastward against the Chin, the aforementioned Jürchen<br />
dynasty ruling northern China.The Hsi-Hsia kingdom, occupying the<br />
“Kansu corridor” and the Ordos region of China, was formed in 1038<br />
by the Tanguts, a people of Tibeto-Burman extraction.It flourished<br />
especially in the twelfth century, partly thanks to the Silk Road trade that
The conquering Mongols 105<br />
passed through its territory.Like the Uighur idiqut of Turfan, the Hsia<br />
king submitted (though more reluctantly) to Genghis Khan in 1209, but<br />
later the Hsi-Hsia court reneged on the promise and the kingdom paid<br />
for this mistake with its extinction in 1227.<br />
Despite occasional reverses, the Mongol chieftain was successful in all<br />
his undertakings.He displayed the flexibility and pragmatism characteristic<br />
also of some of his successors: a peaceful surrender or, better still,<br />
an anticipatory declaration of allegiance could enable a ruler to keep his<br />
throne and a population to escape a massacre; resistance almost invariably<br />
meant decimation or extermination.In 1209 the aforementioned<br />
Uighur idiqut of Turfan had the foresight to submit in time, and when<br />
summoned, to come in 1211 to pay homage to the incipient conqueror<br />
at his headquarters.By doing this he saved his kingdom, but also did the<br />
Mongols a favor whose value probably few realized at the time: for educated<br />
Uighurs entered Mongol service as bureaucrats and provided the<br />
rapidly growing empire with the kind of expertise that the initially illiterate<br />
nomads lacked.<br />
By 1215 Beijing had fallen to the Mongols.Instead of pursuing the<br />
retreating Chin, however, Genghis Khan turned his main attention westward,<br />
possibly stimulated by an embassy from the Kwarazmshah Ala al-<br />
Din Muhammad which he received soon after his sack of Beijing.The<br />
Khwarazmshah was proposing peaceful relations and commercial<br />
cooperation.<br />
Nevertheless, Genghis Khan’s hosts soon resumed the east–west trend<br />
of Inner Asian nomadic movements.There was an important difference<br />
here, however.Whereas other such phenomena – earlier as well as later<br />
– resulted from a variety of natural or human stimuli such as climatic<br />
vicissitudes or political infighting forcing the losing party to move elsewhere,<br />
Genghis Khan and his immediate successors – basically three<br />
generations – undertook their gigantic conquests only after careful and<br />
comprehensive preparations, by means of an organization that surpassed<br />
any other such undertaking, and with a universalist vision which<br />
some historians ascribe to an ideology claiming a mandate from Heaven<br />
to rule the world.The genius that three generations of Mongol leaders<br />
displayed in all these respects, and the dimensions of the empire which<br />
they created, is a unique historical phenomenon, and it alone may justify<br />
the subsequent charisma which descent from the House of Genghis<br />
Khan retained among the Turco-Mongols of Asia for centuries to come,<br />
even after the myriad scions themselves had lost any merit or real power.<br />
In Central Asia, as we have seen, a sudden expansion of Khwarazm
106 A history of Inner Asia<br />
eliminated both Qarakhanid authority and that of the latter’s suzerains,<br />
the Qarakhitay.We have already remarked that if the Khwarazmshah<br />
Ala al-Din Muhammad did not push all the way to Semireche and finish<br />
off the Qarakhanids and Qarakhitay, it was probably because he was<br />
eyeing more prestigious conquests in the west – ultimately that of Iraq,<br />
with the promise of suzerainty over the caliph.It was the Nayman<br />
adventurer Küchlüg, as we have seen, who put an end to Qarakhitay<br />
domination in Semireche and western Sinkiang, and then briefly tormented<br />
their populations before a Mongol advance detachment under<br />
Jebe Noyon – looking in this instance more like a rescue party –<br />
redressed the situation.By 1218 Central Asia was thus divided into two<br />
main political spheres: Khurasan, Transoxania, and Fergana pertained<br />
to the Khwarazmian empire, Sinkiang and Semireche had local rulers<br />
beholden to Genghis Khan.<br />
The Khwarazmshah perhaps wished to let his Mongol neighbor rule<br />
the Orient, but he failed to perceive how mighty an opponent had<br />
appeared on his eastern frontiers.This alone may explain the seemingly<br />
inexplicable: why in 1218 he issued the improvident order – or condoned<br />
the act of his governor claiming that spies were among the merchants<br />
– of massacring a caravan that had arrived from the Mongol<br />
conqueror’s domains at the border post of Otrar on the Syr Darya.An<br />
additional, psychologically plausible trigger is mentioned by the foremost<br />
authority on these events, the Ilkhanid historian Juvayni.Inalchuq,<br />
the governor of Otrar and uncle of the Khwarazmshah, assumed the<br />
name Ghayir Khan when appointed to that post.One of the Muslim<br />
merchants detained at Otrar was his acquaintance and addressed him<br />
as Inalchuq (“little Inal”) instead of as Ghayir Khan.The governor,<br />
feeling insulted, placed the embassy under arrest, and sent a messenger<br />
to the sultan campaigning in Iraq proposing the massacre.On the other<br />
hand, the opinion of some modern scholars that both the governor and<br />
the Khwarazmshah rightly suspected that there were spies among the<br />
merchants is plausible as well.The two aspects are not mutually exclusive:<br />
wounded pride of the already suspicious governor may have<br />
affected the tenor of his report to the equally suspicious shah.<br />
One year later Genghis Khan was poised on the Syr Darya with his<br />
army, ready for the conquest of the Khwarazmshah’s realm.Mongol<br />
power had by then matured into the military and organizational wonder<br />
that in the course of the next several decades so amazed the world.Ala<br />
al-din Muhammad, who had mustered troops numerically superior to<br />
Genghis Khan’s, was nonetheless defeated and some months later per-
The conquering Mongols 107<br />
ished, as a fugitive, on an island in the Caspian.The main military operations<br />
consisted of sieges of cities or acceptance of their surrender, and<br />
of the pursuit of the Khwarazmshah’s son and successor, Jalal al-Din<br />
Mangubirti.By 1223, all of Central Asia, including Khwarazm and<br />
Khurasan, was under Mongol control, and Genghis Khan returned to<br />
Mongolia.In contrast to Ala al-Din Muhammad, Jalal al-Din<br />
Mangubirti proved to be a tough opponent whose valor and resilience<br />
elicited the Mongols’ admiration.He retreated through Afghanistan to<br />
the Indus, which he crossed swimming to escape capture after a hardfought<br />
battle; it was at that point that Genghis Khan reportedly said to<br />
his sons: “Such sons should a father beget! Having escaped the two<br />
whirlpools of water and fire and reached the shore of safety, he will be<br />
the author of countless exploits and troubles without number.How can<br />
a wise man fail to take him into account?”<br />
The conqueror had four sons by his principal wife: Juchi, Chaghatay,<br />
Ögedey, and Toluy.They all assisted him in the main campaigns, often<br />
receiving fairly independent and important assignments: the earliest<br />
such example was Juchi’s two campaigns against the Kyrgyz in 1210 and<br />
1218.In Central Asia, Chaghatay and Ögedey (to be eventually joined<br />
by Juchi) were sent to conquer the Khwarazmian capital Urgench, and<br />
Toluy was left to carry out the conquest of Merv.The manner in which<br />
Genghis Khan organized his empire and prepared the succession bore<br />
traces of the frequently mentioned nomadic concept of authority: succession<br />
need not follow the principle of primogeniture, nor even be<br />
linear.Such a system of course contains an inherent weakness: a steppe<br />
empire was created by a single strong leader, but its preservation was<br />
jeopardized by the absence of a regular and undisputed system of succession.This<br />
is why few nomadic empires outlasted their founders.The<br />
Mongol empire did not escape this logic either, but for at least two more<br />
generations a sufficient degree of discipline and cohesion assured its<br />
continuation and further expansion.Here too this success may have<br />
owed much to Genghis Khan’s lucidity, for the choice of Ögedey,<br />
according to some historians, was an excellent one.At the same time,<br />
luck too was on the Mongols’ side.Genghis Khan apparently expressed<br />
his intention to name Ögedey as his successor already in 1219.The conqueror’s<br />
eldest son, Juchi, taking umbrage at his father’s decision, displayed<br />
a growing tendency toward insubordination while campaigning<br />
in the Kipchak steppe.A military clash between the two may have been<br />
averted only by Juchi’s untimely death a few months before that of<br />
Genghis Khan.Had he survived his father, a civil war might have put an
108 A history of Inner Asia<br />
end to the Mongol empire – or at least to its expansion – before the conquest<br />
of the Russian principalities, Iran, and Sung China.<br />
The patrimony was divided up as fiefdoms called ulus (whose original<br />
meaning was not territorial but military-logistical: a group of tribesmen,<br />
with their families, assigned to a leader) among Genghis Khan’s sons and<br />
grandsons.The youngest, Toluy, received the home territory of<br />
Mongolia as otchigin, “prince of the hearth.” This did not mean that<br />
Toluy inherited the title of qaghan or Great Khan, however: Genghis<br />
Khan, as we have seen, had designated Ögedey as his successor.Ögedey<br />
was also loyally backed by Chaghatay, the eldest surviving son, who had<br />
thus honored his father’s wishes.Besides receiving the supreme title,<br />
Ögedey was given his ulus: central Siberia and eastern Sinkiang; his<br />
favorite area was the valleys of the Emil and upper Irtysh.The complexity<br />
(and in another sense unity) of the Mongol empire, however, is illustrated<br />
by the fact that as qaghan, Ögedey still used Toluy’s fiefdom – the<br />
hearth of the royal house – for ceremonial purposes: it was he rather<br />
than his younger brother who carried out their father’s command to<br />
found an imperial city at Qaraqorum.Chaghatay himself received<br />
Central Asia, a decision of greater importance than may have seemed<br />
at the time.Juchi, the eldest, was dead, so it was his sons who acceded to<br />
his fiefdom: Orda, the eldest, received western Siberia roughly from the<br />
River Irtysh to the River Ural; Batu, the second, was given the territories<br />
west of there.Besides these principal uluses, there also briefly existed<br />
two smaller ones apportioned to Genghis Khan’s brothers Juchi Qasar<br />
and Temüge-Otchigin; they were located at the northeastern fringes of<br />
the empire, in what would today be northern Manchuria, northern<br />
Korea and the Maritime Province of the Russian Republic.Juchi<br />
Qasar’s ulus partly corresponded to what was the original Mongol territory<br />
before the expansion launched by Genghis Khan.<br />
It took two years before Ögedey was enthroned as qaghan in a ceremony<br />
that again took place on “native grounds” between the Onon and<br />
Kerulen.Benefiting from the loyalty and cohesion his brothers and<br />
nephews displayed, he set in motion two grandiose waves of conquests:<br />
the first (1230–33) put an end to what was left of the Chin kingdom in<br />
central China, the second (1236–40) engulfed the Russian principalities.<br />
The latter conquest also created the appanage promised to Batu by<br />
Genghis Khan.<br />
The fact that the territories given to Batu still remained to be conquered<br />
reveals the supreme confidence of the Mongols that he and his<br />
generals and troops would prove equal to the task, and they did.The ter-
The conquering Mongols 109<br />
ritories in question, geographically corresponding to western<br />
Kazakhstan, southern Russia, and southern Ukraine, had already been<br />
reconnoitered by the Mongols in 1223 at the end of the Central Asian<br />
campaign, when a detachment rounded the southern rim of the<br />
Caspian and entered that area through the Caucasus, incidentally<br />
defeating a coalition of Kipchak and Russian princes on the Kalka river<br />
near the Azov Sea.They did not stay, however, and it was not until 1238<br />
through 1240 that the real conquest was carried out by Batu, valiantly<br />
supported by such commanders as Sübedey.Sübedey, probably the most<br />
brilliant of Mongol generals, here too masterminded the military operations<br />
(his son Uriyangkhaday later distinguished himself in the conquest<br />
of southern China and northern Vietnam).On the dynastic level,<br />
the campaign’s significance was marked by the presence of representative<br />
scions of the four branches – Juchi’s son Batu, Chaghatay’s son (or<br />
grandson) Büri, Ögedey’s son Güyük, and Toluy’s son Möngke (Secret<br />
History, #270).The Mongol victory meant the end of Kievan Russia<br />
(more correctly, Rus’) and indirectly led to the eventual rise of Moscow.<br />
The conquest of these westernmost marches – western Kazakhstan,<br />
southern Russia, and Ukraine – represented the second major stage of<br />
Mongol expansion.It was carried out, as we have said, under the auspices<br />
of Genghis Khan’s son and successor, Ögedey.Ögedey’s death in<br />
1241, almost immmediately followed by that of Chaghatay, cut short a<br />
further push into central Europe and gave rise to decade-long tensions<br />
over the succession that came close to civil war.The deceased khan’s<br />
widow, Töregene, acted as regent until in 1246 her son Güyük was<br />
acclaimed qaghan.Güyük had been on bad terms with Batu ever since<br />
the Russian campaign, during which both he and Büri refused to<br />
acknowledge Batu’s authority as the senior member of the group and<br />
insulted him at a victory celebration (for a dramatic rendering of the<br />
clash, see Secret History, #275), whereas Möngke remained unflinchingly<br />
loyal.These incidents presaged the eventual dynastic struggle and<br />
victory of the Toluyids, supported by the Batuids.That happened only<br />
in 1251, however, and for the time being the Ögedeyids seemed able to<br />
prevail.In 1248 Güyük set out for what looked like a planned attack on<br />
his cousin.Once again fate intervened to save the empire’s cohesion, for<br />
Güyük died in Semireche as he was approaching Batu (who had been<br />
forewarned by Toluy’s widow Sorqaqtani, and thus came with his own<br />
troops ready for war).Güyük’s widow Oghul Qaymish acted as regent,<br />
but less successfully than Töregene, and in the end paid for her failure<br />
with her life, for the victors executed her together with several other
110 A history of Inner Asia<br />
members of the Ögedeyid family.In the succession struggle, the<br />
Toluyids joined forces with the Juchids (or more accurately Batuids, since<br />
this line’s effective founder was Juchi’s second son Batu), and by 1251<br />
managed to have Toluy’s son Möngke acclaimed as qaghan.As in the<br />
case of Juchi, Chaghatay, and Ögedey, the empire was saved by a coincidence<br />
of luck and unity between the most effective partners, the<br />
cousins Batu and Möngke.One of the results was the third and final<br />
wave of grandiose conquests.<br />
The final phase of Mongol expansion thus occurred under the third<br />
generation Genghisids – Genghis Khan’s grandsons and Toluy’s sons<br />
Möngke, Qubilay, and Hülegü.Sung China and Korea on the one hand,<br />
and southern Iran and Iraq on the other, were the countries brought<br />
under Mongol rule by these three brothers.In both cases the conquest<br />
had been started by Genghis Khan himself, but only the northern<br />
regions of these areas were overrun; the greater part had to wait until<br />
the Mongols could launch the campaigns whose success must again be<br />
sought in their characteristically methodical and grandiose preparation<br />
– this time by Möngke, the Great Khan (1251–59).<br />
The conquest of Iran and Iraq was delegated to Hülegü, and its two<br />
highlights were the destruction of the Assassins ensconced in central<br />
Iran (1256), and of the Abbasid caliphate in Baghdad (1258).It was followed<br />
by the conquest of Syria and might have included that of Egypt,<br />
but in 1259 fate intervened once more and in a manner reminiscent of<br />
1241: the Great Khan Möngke died, and Hülegü, wary of the imminent<br />
succession contest in the Mongol empire, refrained with the greater part<br />
of his troops from participating in the march through Syria toward<br />
Egypt.Thus it happened that a smaller contingent under General Ket-<br />
Buqa was defeated in 1260 by the Mamluk General Baybars at the<br />
Syrian site of Ayn Jalut (“Goliath’s Spring”), and the civil war that broke<br />
out between Hülegü’s brothers Qubilay and Arigh Böke prevented the<br />
Mongols from doing what they routinely did after any setback – trying<br />
harder and succeeding the next time.The outside world, especially the<br />
Islamic one, of course knew little of this background, and the Mamluk<br />
victory had an immense psychological effect, for it broke the myth of<br />
Mongol invincibility.The conquest of Iran and Iraq, however, had been<br />
accomplished, and Hülegü, the head of the new Mongol domain,<br />
assumed the title of ilkhan – a khan subordinate (il) to the qaghan at the<br />
empire’s center.<br />
The conquest of China was launched in 1258, and was not completed<br />
until 1279 – a testimony to the vastness and difficulty of the terrain (even
The conquering Mongols 111<br />
though only the southern half had remained to be conquered) but also<br />
to the tenacity of the Sung dynasty and their subjects.Moreover, both<br />
the Great Khan himself and his brother Qubilay took part in the military<br />
operations against the Sung.The campaign cost Möngke his life, for<br />
he died in the province of Szechwan, probably from a wound sustained<br />
during a siege, in 1259.Qubilay hurried home where he knew his<br />
brother Arigh Böke would claim the title of Great Khan.Qubilay had<br />
his troops acclaim him as qaghan even before they reached the ancestral<br />
grounds in Mongolia, while his brother assumed that title at<br />
Qaraqorum.Thus began the first full-fledged civil war in the Mongol<br />
empire, and although by 1264 Qubilay had emerged victorious, he soon<br />
had to wage war against other relatives who were laying similar claims;<br />
the foremost among these was Qaydu (d.1303), a son of Ögedey’s fifth<br />
son Qashi and one of the few members of the Ögedeyid branch who<br />
had survived the purges of 1251–52.<br />
The contest with Qaydu proved to be an even more protracted affair<br />
than the conquest of China, and it presents another significant contrast.<br />
Much as Qubilay cherished the title of Great Khan and demanded submission<br />
from his relatives farther west, his main focus was on China.He<br />
no longer considered Qaraqorum as his headquarters, but moved to a<br />
site where in 1215 his grandfather Genghis Khan had destroyed the<br />
capital of the Chin dynasty.Qubilay built there his own city which<br />
became known by the Chinese name Ta-tu (“The Great City”) and by<br />
the Mongol name Khanbaliq (“The Khan’s City”, Marco Polo’s<br />
Cumbalic; the eventual Beijing).More than one-half of his long reign<br />
was devoted, as we have seen, to the completion of the conquest of<br />
China (1260–79).The remaining years – 1279 to 1294 – were spent<br />
mainly in Beijing, where Qubilay assumed the posture of a Chinese<br />
emperor and an urbanite.He took a keen interest in Buddhism, and had<br />
enough sense to let mostly able and honest officials administer the<br />
country which became a far greater source of wealth for him than any<br />
ulus in Inner Asia could have been.He identified with his vastly<br />
expanded new realm also in the manner characteristic of other conquerors<br />
from the north: in 1271 he adopted for his ruling house a Chinese<br />
dynastic name: Yüan (“Origin”).<br />
Meanwhile his rival Qaydu remained a steppe nomad to the hilt.The<br />
center of the originally Ögedeyid ulus lay between the rivers Emil and<br />
Black (Upper) Irtysh and the Tarbagatai mountains, thus in one of the<br />
geographical cores of Eurasia.From there, he could operate both east<br />
and west to enforce his claim.He met with partial or intermittent success
112 A history of Inner Asia<br />
in the west, where some princes and territories of the Chaghatayid ulus<br />
deferred to his authority.He even managed to convene a quriltay, probably<br />
in 1269 on the Talas, where the princes and chieftains of both the<br />
Chaghatayid and Ögedeyid branches acclaimed him as qaghan.He<br />
fared less well in the east, however, although his expeditions several times<br />
reached Mongolia; the fact that this had little effect on Qubilay’s and his<br />
grandson and successor Temür Öljeytü’s (1294–1307) solid rule in<br />
China reveals how wide the chasm between the nomadic warrior chieftain<br />
and the first two Mongol qaghans who were now also emperors of<br />
China had become.The latter now had the formidable resources of<br />
their populous realm at their disposal, while they still possessed much<br />
of the Mongol military prowess and knowhow.Qaydu’s yet another<br />
attempt to seize Qaraqorum ended in defeat, and he died while retreating,<br />
probably in 1303.<br />
With Qaydu’s death, the ulus of the Ögedeyids definitively disappeared,<br />
its components having been absorbed by the Chaghatayids,<br />
Juchids, and Toluyids (the Yüan).This was ironical, considering the<br />
Ögedeyids’ promising beginnings with their eponym as the first Great<br />
Khan and successor of Genghis Khan.The event also signified the final<br />
apportionment and stabilization of the Mongol empire.It now consisted<br />
of four basic units ruled by descendants of three Genghisid branches: (1)<br />
the Toluyid Yüan empire of China, which also comprised the ancestral<br />
lands of Mongolia, but with Beijing instead of Qaraqorum as the<br />
capital; (2) the domain of the Chaghatayids, which consisted of<br />
Transoxania, Semireche, and Sinkiang; its khans still clung to their<br />
nomadic ways and mostly lived in the valley of the Ili, while holding<br />
their annual quriltays in the vicinity of the city of Almaliq; (3) the<br />
domain of the Juchids, known to Muslim historians as the Khanate of<br />
Kipchak; it consisted of two principal uluses: that of the Batuids (later<br />
known to Europeans as the Golden Horde), and that of the Ordayids,<br />
besides some smaller appanages such as that of the Shibanids and that<br />
of the Toqay-Timurids; and (4) the Toluyid Ilkhanid realm of Persia,<br />
Iraq, and eastern Anatolia.<br />
Chaghatay died in 1242, and was succeeded by his grandson Qara<br />
Hülegü (1241–47 and, briefly, 1252).Thus began a new stage in Central<br />
Asia’s history, that of the Chaghatayid dynasty.Its duration and effect<br />
are too complex for an adequate account here, but certain salient features<br />
can be brought out.Khwarazm did not form part of “Ulus<br />
Chaghatay,” but fell to “Ulus Juchi,” Batu’s and his successors’ fiefdom
The conquering Mongols 113<br />
in the Dasht-i Kipchak.Neither did Khurasan, which for the most part<br />
remained in the orbit of Ilkhanid Persia.Transoxania proper, Fergana,<br />
Semireche, and western Sinkiang represented Chaghatayid territories,<br />
each of which would gradually assert its own individuality and distinctive<br />
evolution.For over a century, Chaghatay’s descendants lived mainly<br />
in the aforementioned steppes of Semireche and the Ili valley; most<br />
retained their nomadic lifestyle and remained pagan; the political and<br />
moral norm they respected was the yasa, the traditional Mongol code of<br />
behavior as formulated under Genghis Khan or, more probably, shortly<br />
after his death.Both their nomadism and yasa presented a striking contrast<br />
to the sedentarism and the sharia, Islamic law, of the ulus’s mostly<br />
Muslim townspeople and agriculturalists.The Mongols, following the<br />
characteristic religious tolerance (or indifference) of Eurasian nomads,<br />
did not interfere with their subjects’ Islam (except in those instances<br />
where Islamic rituals clashed with the Mongol yasa strictly upheld by<br />
Chaghatay; this applied especially to Mongol strictures against ablution<br />
in running water and against the Muslim way of ritually slaughtering<br />
animals) – nor, for that matter, with other religions such as Christianity<br />
(their rule even gave a brief opportunity for Roman Catholic proselytism),<br />
and on the whole they let the settled areas be administered by<br />
Muslim governors (monitored by usually Mongol or Turkic residents<br />
called darughachis). The Mongol term darughachi, the Turkic term basqaq<br />
(both apparently deriving from the verb to “press,” meaning “to impress<br />
a seal”), and the Arabic term shahna seem to have been used synonymously<br />
by Muslim historians.There may have been shifting nuances of<br />
meaning between them, but it does appear that the term was often<br />
applied to types of functionaries translatable as “governor,” “resident,”<br />
or “tax collector.”<br />
A remarkable illustration of the last-named feature is the career of<br />
Mahmud Yalavach, originally a Khwarazmian merchant who was<br />
appointed governor of the settled segments – urban as well as agricultural<br />
– of Transoxania in 1225 and was then succeeded by his son<br />
Masudbek (1239–89).These Muslim governors were under the jurisdiction<br />
of the Great Khan rather than under that of the Chaghatayid ruler<br />
of the ulus; this gave the cities and areas under cultivation considerable<br />
autonomy, relative peace, growing prosperity, and a special cultural<br />
dimension under what some modern historians are fond of calling the<br />
pax mongolica: for the fact that Ulus Chaghatay was a component of the<br />
Mongol empire, and eventually lay at the geographical core of this
114 A history of Inner Asia<br />
unprecedented formation with China at the eastern end and southern<br />
Russia and Iraq at the western, reinforced Central Asia’s role as the<br />
crossroads of trade and civilizations.True, this structure had begun to<br />
break down by the time Qubilay and his kinsmen came to power in the<br />
second half of the thirteenth century; moreover, their internecine struggles<br />
for both supreme and local power were compounded by the first<br />
appearance of religious “defections” – the Islamization of the Ilkhanids<br />
under Ghazan Khan (1295–1304), and of the Batuids (the Golden<br />
Horde) under Uzbek Khan (1312–41).<br />
What then was the effect that the Mongols had on Central Asia? The<br />
picture presents a kaleidoscope of contradictions.Let us consider the<br />
cities and urban civilization.Taken as a whole, the effect was initially disastrous;<br />
most cities suffered plunder and decimation of their populations.But<br />
there were two kinds of final outcome: those that sooner or<br />
later recovered, as Samarkand, Bukhara and Urgench for example; and<br />
those that never really did, as Merv for example.Moreover, this statement<br />
applies mainly to Transoxania proper and Khurasan; the outcome<br />
was different in Semireche, where not only cities but settled life disappeared<br />
altogether.The explanation lies in a variety of factors.One is the<br />
magnitude of the original blow.Merv appears to have been fully and<br />
deliberately obliterated, for the complete massacre of its population –<br />
with the exception of some 400 craftsmen deported to Mongolia –<br />
deprived it of the labor force necessary to maintain the irrigation of its<br />
oasis and protect it from the surrounding desert.The disappearance of<br />
this Khurasanian metropolis is lamented in almost Biblical terms by a<br />
contemporary witness, the renowned Arab geographer Yaqut:<br />
I stayed there three years, and if it had not been for the destruction that befell<br />
the country with the Tatar invasion, I would not have left Merv to the end of<br />
my days: this because of the supportiveness [of the people], gentle climate,<br />
good company, and multitude of excellent scholarly books there.When I left it,<br />
there were ten endowed libraries [in Merv] whose like I have not seen anywhere<br />
else in the world in terms of size and excellence.There were for example two<br />
collections in the main mosque; one of these was called Aziziya, because it had<br />
been endowed by a certain Aziz al-Din Abu Bakr Atiq al-Zanjani; he used to<br />
be Sultan Sanjar’s faqqa’i, [and before that] he had been selling fruit and aromatic<br />
plants at the market of Merv, then he became the sultan’s maker of<br />
drinks.He enjoyed his esteem; the library [he had endowed] contained about<br />
twelve thousand volumes.The other collection [in the mosque] was called<br />
Kamaliya, [but] I do not know [which Kamal] it was attributed to.Then there<br />
was the library of Sharaf al-Mulk al-Mustawfi ibn Sad Muhammad ibn
The conquering Mongols 115<br />
Mansur, located in his madrasa; he was of the Hanafite madhhab, and died in<br />
the year 494 [1101].Then there was the library of Nizam al-Mulk al-Hasan<br />
ibn Ishaq, [again] in his madrasa; two libraries [endowed] by the Samani<br />
family; another library was in the Amidiya madrasa; [then there was] the<br />
library of Majd al-Mulk, one of the recent viziers; the queen’s library (khatuniya)<br />
located in her madrasa, and the Damiriya library in one of the dervish<br />
lodges (khangah) there.The use of these collections was so convenient that at<br />
any given moment I had at home two hundred volumes or [even] more, without<br />
having to leave a deposit, [even though] their value amounted to as many<br />
dinars.I gorged myself with these collections and benefited from them, and<br />
they made me forget [my own] people and family.The qualities of this book<br />
and of whatever else I have compiled derive from the collections I have<br />
described.As I was leaving Merv, I kept turning my loving glance back toward<br />
it, and began to hum a Bedouin’s composition: “The nights when we were<br />
together in Marw al-Shahijan”.<br />
Indeed, it seems that the depopulation of Merv may have originally<br />
been part of a plan that the Mongols had of converting the Murghab<br />
and other valleys of northern Khurasan – modern Turkmenistan – into<br />
one of their nomadic “habitats.” They were dissuaded from doing so by<br />
advisers suggesting that taxing settled populations brings more profit<br />
than replacing them with herds of livestock; a similar case occurred in<br />
northern China where the Mongols’ aforementioned Khitan adviser Yelü<br />
Ch’u-ts’ai saved the situation.If Transoxania escaped this fate,<br />
Semireche was less lucky: there, the conversion of a territory with a<br />
thriving urban and agricultural civilization into a nomads’ steppeland<br />
did take place, although this time not as the result of a deliberate plan<br />
but through the sheer suitability – in contrast to the half-desert, halfoasis<br />
tracts of Transoxania and Khurasan – of this area for the nomads’<br />
lifestyle.It was Semireche and territories farther east where for a long<br />
time the Mongols of Ulus Chaghatay chose to live, with the aforementioned<br />
result.This transformation is vividly described by several contemporary<br />
and native observers.Here is what the Syrian geographer Shihab<br />
al-Din al-Umari (d.1349) writes:<br />
A person who has travelled in the provinces of Turkestan and passed through<br />
its villages told me that only scattered traces and collapsed ruins have remained;<br />
the traveller sees from afar what appears like a village with solid buildings and<br />
green surroundings, and he looks forward to finding friendly inhabitants, but<br />
upon reaching it, he finds the buildings still standing but devoid of humans<br />
except for some nomads and herders, without any agriculture, for what is green<br />
there consists of grass as the Creator has let it grow, with steppe vegetation<br />
which nobody has sown or planted.
116 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Some two centuries later two native authors mention the consummation<br />
of this change.Babur (1483–1530) writes in his Memoirs (the<br />
Baburname):<br />
On the north [of Fergana], though in former times there must have been towns<br />
such as Almaliq, Almatu, and Yangi, which in books they write Taraz, at the<br />
present time all is desolate, no settled population whatever remaining, because<br />
of the Mongols and the Uzbeks.<br />
Babur’s cousin and slightly younger contemporary, Muhammad<br />
Mirza Haydar, sketches in his book Tarikh-i Rashidi the following picture:<br />
Some of the towns of Moghulistan are mentioned by name and described in<br />
standard works.Among them is Balasaghun.In books of repute and histories,<br />
Balasaghun is said to have been one of the cities built by Afrasiyab, and [the<br />
authors] have praised it very highly.The author of the Surat al-lughat gives the<br />
names of eminent men of every town.In Samarkand, he reckons fewer than<br />
ten, but in Balasaghun he mentions the names of a great number of learned<br />
and notable persons, and quotes traditions concerning some of them.The mind<br />
is incapable of conceiving how there could have been, at one time and in one<br />
city, so many men of eminence, and that now neither name nor trace is to be<br />
found of Balasaghun.Another town mentioned in books is Taraz.It is said that<br />
the Moghuls call Taraz “Yangi”.Now in those steppes which they called Yangi,<br />
there are remains of many cities, in the form of domes, minarets, and traces of<br />
schools and monasteries; but it is not evident which of these ruined cities was<br />
Yangi, or what were the names of others.<br />
Finally yet another possible effect of the Mongol invasions deserves<br />
mention.The steppes of Eurasia are the home not only of nomads but<br />
also of other creatures, marmots among them.These rodents tend to be<br />
infested with fleas, which in turn harbor the virus that can cause bubonic<br />
plague among humans.It seems that the disease was indeed affecting the<br />
Mongols but stayed at a low endemic level among them.Once it reached<br />
outsiders, however, it broke out in the catastrophic epidemic of the Black<br />
Death that by the end of the fourteenth century wiped out a good third<br />
of Europe’s population.The gate of entry was, some historians suspect,<br />
the Crimean port of Caffa, and the year was 1347.Caffa was a Genoese<br />
colony at the time, and a disagreement with Janibeg, the Khan of the<br />
Golden Horde (1341–57), led to a siege of the city by the Mongols.The<br />
besiegers apparently tossed the bodies of people who had died of plague<br />
into the city, and the disease, catching on and traveling in Genoese ships,<br />
spread like brushfire – first in Egypt and then on the European side of<br />
the Mediterranean.
chapter eight<br />
The Chaghatayids<br />
About a century after the Mongol invasion, some Chaghatayid khans<br />
began to convert to Islam.This tended to happen when they chose to<br />
live not in Semireche but in Transoxania, thus among staunchly Muslim<br />
populations.True, many of their subjects there were Turks, who had<br />
entered that territory since Kök Turkic and Qarakhanid times, and some<br />
of whom nevertheless remained nomads and lived in a style not unlike<br />
that of the Mongols themselves; but the area’s settled population,<br />
whether Iranian or Turkic, and whether urban or agricultural, had survived<br />
and conserved or recovered the florescence of its Islamic civilization<br />
– in contrast, as we have seen, to Semireche.<br />
Islam played a fundamental role in the resilience of native identity<br />
and renaissance during these years of Mongol rule, and an especially<br />
seminal part was assumed by its Sufi dimension (just as it was to do centuries<br />
later during the years of Soviet rule).In the thirteenth and fourteenth<br />
centuries, the dominant orders in Mongol Central Asia were the<br />
Kubravi and Yasavi tariqas.The Kubravi Shaykh Sayf al-Din Bakharzi<br />
of Bukhara can serve as an example.<br />
Shaykh Sayf al-Din Bakharzi had been a disciple of Najm al-Din<br />
Kubra in Urgench, the founder of the Kubraviya order of dervishes,<br />
who at a critical moment sent him with a proselytizing mission to<br />
Bukhara.While Kubra perished during the storming of Urgench by the<br />
Mongols, Bakharzi not only survived their seizure of Bukhara but subsequently<br />
attained such prestige that the aforementioned Berke (Khan<br />
of the Golden Horde, 1257–67), a convert to Islam, came to Bukhara to<br />
visit the shaykh.Moreover, Sorqaqtani, the widow of Toluy and mother<br />
of the Great Khans Möngke and Qubilay, herself a Christian, is said to<br />
have donated the considerable sum of 1,000 balish 1 of silver for a<br />
1 Balish, Persian for “cushion,” was the standard thirteenth-century Mongolian monetary unit<br />
(interestingly, it rather than its Turkic synonym yastuq seems to have been the term used by the<br />
Mongols).See B.Spuler, “Balish,” EI, vol.I, p.996.<br />
117
118 A history of Inner Asia<br />
madrasa to be built and maintained in Bukhara, and gave instructions<br />
that Sayf al-Din Bakharzi become the mudabbir (principal) of the school<br />
and mutavalli (administrator) of the waqf endowment.Both the shaykh<br />
himself and the shrine complex that subsequently developed around his<br />
tomb in the Bukharan suburb of Fathabad illustrate the aforementioned<br />
role played by the religious establishment, especially that of the Sufi<br />
type, in the rehabilitation of Central Asia as prosperous Islamic society<br />
recovering from the devastations wrought by the Mongol invasion and<br />
its aftershocks.<br />
Sayf al-Din Bakharzi also may have had influence on temporal<br />
Muslim power serving the Mongols.Thus when Qutb al-Din Habash<br />
Amid served as vizier under Chaghatay, the shaykh sent him what might<br />
be called an “open letter” in the form of a poem reminding him of his<br />
accountability before God for the way he treated Muslims.“Since you<br />
have been appointed to make the [divine] truth prevail in this realm, if<br />
you do not do that, what will you offer as excuse on Doomsday?…” There<br />
is of course a pardonable inaccuracy in the shaykh’s address: Chaghatay<br />
certainly did not appoint Habash to “make the divine, i.e. Islamic, truth<br />
prevail,” unless the assumption is that the Mongol unwittingly acted on<br />
God’s command.At any rate, this exchange must have happened before<br />
1242, the year of Chaghatay’s death, thus also before the abovementioned<br />
visit by Berke and donation by Sorqaqtani.Those events suggest<br />
that the shaykh’s authority kept increasing especially in the final years of<br />
his life.Little is known about the order’s role under his son and first khalifa,<br />
Abu al-Muzaffar Ahmad, but one can infer that the internecine wars<br />
among the Mongols, characteristic of the empire after the death of<br />
Möngke and so crippling for the regions affected, could not but adversely<br />
affect the Kubravi lodge.Things had begun to improve by the time of the<br />
third generation, when in 712/1312–13 Sayf al-Din’s grandson Abu al-<br />
Mafakhir Shaykh Yahya (d.736/1335–36) acceded to the stewardship of<br />
the Bukharan branch.There was a general economic upturn, and the<br />
shaykh was able to increase the resources of the lodge whose spiritual as<br />
well as organizational center was his grandfather’s mausoleum, by<br />
turning a portion of his personal wealth into a waqf or endowment destined<br />
for the benefit of the shrine.He purchased eleven agricultural villages,<br />
and the result was a considerable expansion of the shrine complex<br />
and of its principal function, spiritual pursuits of the community and<br />
provision of material means for doing so.Shaykh Yahya’s endowment is<br />
vividly documented by three copies of the original waqf-name or endow-
The Chaghatayids 119<br />
ment deed preserved in Uzbek libraries and published in a critical edition<br />
with a Russian translation by Olga Chekhovich. 2 In certain basic respects<br />
this document resembles most other waqfiyas throughout the Islamic<br />
world: after the praise of God, the prophet Muhammad, and the angels,<br />
the donor identifies himself and states the reasons for the donation; 3 then<br />
follows a detailed description of the property or goods constituting the<br />
endowment, and specifications of how the income from their yield<br />
should be used for the pious purpose; this in turn is followed by stipulations<br />
about the administration and activities of the endowment.The<br />
final part consists of a long list of witnesses certifying the genuineness of<br />
the document.The date of the deed is 1 Ramadan 726/1 August 1326,<br />
the first year of the Chaghatayid Tarmashirin’s reign.<br />
The Fathabad shrine was visited by Ibn Battuta a few years after the<br />
establishment of the endowment, and the famous Moroccan traveler<br />
was one of its first foreign guests.His account vividly conveys the atmosphere<br />
at the khangah:<br />
We alighted in a suburb (rabad) of Bukhara known as Fathabad, where there is<br />
the tomb (qabr) of the learned, devout, ascetic shaykh Sayf al-Din Bakharzi, one<br />
of the great saints (awliya).This lodge (zawiya) 4 is connected with the shaykh; it<br />
is immense, and has vast endowments from which travellers are fed.Its superior,<br />
Yahya al-Bakharzi, is one of his descendants.He entertained me in his<br />
home, and invited the prominent men of the city [of Bukhara] for the occasion.<br />
The Koran-readers recited with beautiful modulations, the preacher delivered<br />
a sermon, and they sang melodiously in Turki and Persian (ghannaw bi l-turki wal-farsi).We<br />
passed there a wonderful night.I met on this occasion the Sadr al-<br />
Sharia, an excellent learned jurist ( faqih) who had come from Herat.” 5<br />
As for the Mongols, conversion to Islam proved at first to be risky for<br />
some of the khans.A poignant example is that of the aforementioned<br />
Ala al-din Tarmashirin (1326–34), who was deposed at the ulus’s annual<br />
quriltay in Almaliq, and subsequently perished in flight, probably at<br />
Nakhshab near Samarkand. 6 His offence, the Mongol elders charged,<br />
was that he did not observe the yasa as the supreme code of the state.<br />
The fact that most of the time he disdained their company and followed<br />
2 O.D.Chekhovich, Bukharskie dokumenty XIV veka (Tashkent, 1965).<br />
3 The principal reason was of course a wish to please God and reap rewards in the next world.A<br />
secondary but important reason was the preservation of property as a source of the endower’s<br />
and his descendants’ income by reserving the right of often lucrative trusteeship for them.<br />
4 Ibn Battuta thus translates the Persian word khangah into Arabic as zawiya.<br />
5 Voyages, vol.III, pp.27–28; Travels, vol.III, p.554.<br />
6 Voyages, vol.III, pp.41–43; Travels, vol.III, pp.560–62.
120 A history of Inner Asia<br />
a still alien religion with sharia instead of yasa as the supreme code must<br />
have further irritated them.Tarmashirin’s fervor as a new convert, forcefully<br />
portrayed by Ibn Battuta, may indeed have blinded him to the<br />
mood of his peers:<br />
Here is an illustration of the virtues of this king [i.e. Tarmashirin]: One day I<br />
was present at the afternoon prayer, but the sultan had not yet come; instead,<br />
one of his pages came with a prayer-rug and, placing it in front of the mihrab<br />
where he usually prayed, said to the imam Husam al-Din al-Yaghi: “My master<br />
wants you to wait with the prayer while he is performing his ablutions.” The<br />
imam stood up and said [in Persian]: “Namaz (which means ‘prayer’) birayi<br />
Khuda aw birayi Tarmashirin?” or, “Is the prayer for God or for Tarmashirin?”<br />
Then he ordered the muezzin to proceed with the prayer.The sultan came after<br />
the first two prostrations had already been performed, and he joined the prayer<br />
with the last two [prostrations] behind the assembly by the door of the mosque<br />
where people leave their shoes; he then peformed what he had missed [by<br />
himself], stood up and, smiling, walked to the imam in order to take his hand,<br />
and sat down in front of the mihrab with the shaykh imam beside him and me<br />
beside the imam.He said to me: “When you return to your country, tell [your<br />
countrymen] that this is how the lowest of Persians treats the sultan of the<br />
Turks.” 7 This shaykh preached every Friday, ordering the sultan to do what is<br />
right and to refrain from doing what is forbidden and from injustice; he used<br />
the harshest language, and the sultan listened to him and wept8 One also wonders how the Chaghatayid elite’s probably still dominant<br />
Mongol language and consciousness meshed with what seems to<br />
have been an increasingly Muslim Turkic identity of the convert, as the<br />
quoted passage shows.Moreover, the characterization of the imam as a<br />
Persian ascetic confirms the force of the Iranian element, whether of<br />
local origin or from Persia itself.<br />
Tarmashirin was succeeded by several pagan khans, but his tragic end<br />
illustrates a cleavage that went deeper than the unorthodoxy – from a<br />
heathen nomad’s standpoint – of a renegade khan.Semireche and the<br />
adjacent territories, from the Talas river all the way to the upper course<br />
of the Ili, together with present-day northern Kyrgyzstan, had developed<br />
a special identity, that of a Mongol homeland, to the extent of<br />
acquiring a new name, Moghulistan – in other words, Mongolia.We<br />
7 Tarmashirin was a Mongol and a descendant of Genghis Khan.His reference to himself as<br />
“sultan of the Turks” suggests that he had not only converted to Islam but also became more<br />
attuned to the principal component of his subjects, the Turks, whose language he probably spoke<br />
as well as Mongolian or better; in addition, he also seems to have known Persian (the sermon that<br />
brought the sultan to tears was delivered in that language) and, obviously, Arabic in its religious<br />
dimension (the Koran). 8 Voyages, vol.III, pp.36–38; Travels, vol.III, p.559.
The Chaghatayids 121<br />
have discussed the transformation of that area from a partly settled<br />
urban and agricultural country into the grazing grounds of nomadic<br />
tribes: the new name was symbolic of the change.This development<br />
presented a sharp contrast to Transoxania and Khurasan, where no or<br />
little such change took place.It was thus no accident that this cleavage<br />
eventually took on a political form: by 1370 a Muslim Turk, Timur, had<br />
seized effective power in Transoxania and had founded a dynasty that<br />
brought an end to Chaghatayid rule there; in Moghulistan and Sinkiang,<br />
on the other hand, Chaghatayid khans ruled until the seventeenth<br />
century.Timur’s emergence in 1370 can thus be considered another<br />
watershed in the history of Central Asia, a formal end to Mongol hegemony<br />
that had begun a century and a half earlier with the conquest led<br />
by Genghis Khan.During the fourteenth century, this hegemony collapsed<br />
or began to falter all over the once unified Mongol empire.In<br />
China the last khan of the Yüan dynasty, Toghon Temür (1333–70), was<br />
driven out by a national resurgence spearheaded by Chu Yüan-chang, a<br />
peasant who then became, as Hong-wu, the first emperor of the native<br />
Ming dynasty (1368–1644).In the Golden Horde, the rule of Janibeg<br />
(1341–57) was followed by years of turmoil and infighting that in 1380<br />
enabled the Russians to win their first great victory over the Mongols:<br />
this was the “Battle on the Kulikovo field,” or also “on the Don river,”<br />
hence the epithet “Donskoy” by which Prince Dimitriy of Moscow, the<br />
victor over the Mongol khan Mamay, has been known in chronicles and<br />
popular memory.In Iran, the Ilkhanid dynasty had collapsed even<br />
earlier when Abu Said’s death in 1335 led to convulsions that by 1353<br />
extinguished Mongol rule there.Gradually areas ruled by people who<br />
claimed Genghisid ancestry, spoke Mongolian, and had not become<br />
Muslims shrank back to Mongolia proper and, up to a point,<br />
Moghulistan; even there, however, Islam demonstrated its resilient dynamism<br />
by eventually reasserting itself and resuming its spread farther east<br />
and over the rest of Sinkiang: for with Tughluq Timur (1347–63), the<br />
conversion of the Chaghatayid khans became definitive.Some of them,<br />
such as Mansur (1502–43) took up the jihad, aimed chiefly at eastern<br />
Sinkiang, as the major mission of their reign; it was during this period<br />
that formerly Buddhist places like Turfan definitively entered the Dar al-<br />
Islam.By then, however, even these Mongol tribes of Moghulistan and<br />
Sinkiang had probably become Turkicized linguistically; in this they followed<br />
the example of most of the other remaining dynasties claiming<br />
Genghisid ancestry except for those in Mongolia.In Transoxania, the
122 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Chaghatayids’ effective rule came to an end by 1370 with the emergence<br />
of the above-mentioned Timur, our Tamerlane (not to be confused with<br />
Tughluq Timur; timur, “iron” in Turkic – and its variants such as temür<br />
and demir – was a favorite name among the Turks and Mongols, present<br />
even in the original name of Genghis Khan, Temujin).
chapter nine<br />
Timur and the Timurids<br />
If the Mongol interlude (1220–1370) was a traumatic experience in the<br />
history of Central Asia, the Timurid period (1370–1507) can be a<br />
viewed as ultimately its most glorious one.It is true that the founder of<br />
this dynasty, Timur (ruled 1370–1405), was a ruthless conqueror not<br />
unlike Genghis Khan, and spent much of his life engaged in military<br />
campaigns that wrought similar massacres and destruction.These,<br />
however, befell other areas (Iran, the Golden Horde), while sparing<br />
Central Asia itself.At any rate, Timur’s successors showed less aptitude<br />
for large-scale conquest than for enjoying the good life at home; and<br />
despite frequent infighting for the possession of this or that portion of<br />
the inheritance, many of them also encouraged culture and the arts.<br />
Timur himself had endeavored to embellish his capital, Samarkand,<br />
with grandiose architectural monuments some of which still constitute<br />
the pride of modern Uzbekistan: his own mausoleum, the Gur-i Emir<br />
(“The Sovereign’s Tomb”), is the most famous example.Timur’s quaint<br />
European appellation, Tamerlane, is a deformation of Timur-i lang,<br />
“The lame Timur,” a Turco-Persian name as it appears in certain<br />
Persian sources because of a leg maimed by a wound he sustained early<br />
in his life.<br />
Timur was born around 1336 in Transoxania near Kesh – later<br />
known as Shahrisabz – in the Kashka Darya region of what is today the<br />
Republic of Uzbekistan.He was a Turk of the Barlas tribe; this tribe,<br />
like many others, boasted a Mongol name and ancestry, but for all practical<br />
purposes it was Turkic.Turki was thus Timur’s mother tongue,<br />
although he may have known some Persian from the cultural milieu in<br />
which he lived; he almost certainly knew no Mongolian, though Mongol<br />
terminology had not quite disappeared from administrative documents<br />
and coins.<br />
The process by which Timur seized power, and then exercised it, was<br />
similar to Genghis Khan’s; namely, through personal and tribal alliances<br />
123
Moscow<br />
1395<br />
Tamerlane's campaigns, with<br />
dates of battles or conquests<br />
Kunduzcha<br />
1391<br />
Ural River<br />
Volga River<br />
New Saray<br />
1395 H O R D E<br />
Lake<br />
Balkhash<br />
Ili River<br />
G O L D E N<br />
Azov<br />
1395<br />
MOGHULISTAN<br />
Otrar<br />
1405<br />
Aral<br />
Sea<br />
Black Sea<br />
A L T I S H A H R<br />
Kashgar<br />
Tashkent<br />
Bukhara Samarkand<br />
Shahrisabz<br />
(Kesh)<br />
Urgench<br />
Caspian Sea<br />
Ankara<br />
1402<br />
OTTOMAN<br />
TURKEY<br />
Izmit<br />
1402<br />
Balkh<br />
Aleppo<br />
Kabul<br />
Nishaput<br />
Herat<br />
IRAN<br />
IRAQ<br />
Baghdad<br />
Damascus<br />
S Y R I A<br />
Isfahan<br />
1387<br />
Delhi<br />
1398<br />
Indus River<br />
Shiraz<br />
1387<br />
I N D I A<br />
A R A B I A<br />
P e r s i a n G u l f<br />
Timurid Empire<br />
Map 4 Timurid Empire
Timur and the Timurids 125<br />
in which he showed a mastery and endurance quite comparable to<br />
Genghis Khan’s.In one respect, however, he never could match his<br />
model’s stature: that of the legitimacy of rule.While Genghis Khan was<br />
unencumbered by the overpowering prestige of any rival regal figure or<br />
dynasty during his arduous beginning and ultimate hegemony, Timur’s<br />
rise and hold on power was in this sense more difficult: by his time, the<br />
charisma of Genghisid descent was so great that virtually no nomadic<br />
ruler in Inner Asia, from those of the Golden Horde all the way to those<br />
of Sinkiang and Mongolia, felt legitimate unless he possessed it or could<br />
state that he was ruling in a Genghisid’s name.There were various ways<br />
to do the latter: alliance through marriage or setting a puppet scion of<br />
the house of Genghis Khan on the throne and ruling in his name were<br />
the most frequent ones, and Timur had recourse to both.He thus never<br />
assumed the supreme title of khan but only that of amir and gurgan,more<br />
correctly küregen, a Mongol term meaning son-in-law – by virtue of his<br />
marriage to a princess of the Genghisid line.A symptom of the purely<br />
formal value of the second stratagem, that of setting up puppet khans<br />
of Genghisid descent, and of the latter’s function as tools in Timur’s<br />
hands, is the fact that the specific line he chose in 1370 was Ögedeyid<br />
rather than Chaghatayid.On the other hand, unlike Genghis Khan,<br />
Timur could claim the right to rule in virtue of being an Islamic<br />
monarch whose success reflected God’s will.It seems, however, that this<br />
posture played a rather marginal role in Timur’s case, and that the main<br />
thrust of his confidence and authority was generated by his political and<br />
military genius.<br />
Timur’s military exploits were spectacular.His campaigns spanned<br />
Eurasia from eastern Sinkiang to southern Russia – Moscow escaped<br />
sack by sheer luck – to India, Syria, and Anatolia.Sacked or conquered<br />
cities such as Delhi, Isfahan, Baghdad, Damascus, Saray, and Izmir<br />
reveal their range.He won signal victories over such adversaries as<br />
Tokhtamish, khan of the Golden Horde, in 1395, Nasir al-din<br />
Mahmudshah, the sultan of Delhi, in 1398, and Bayezid I, the Ottoman<br />
sultan, in 1402.Nevertheless, the empire he founded was in no way comparable<br />
to that established by Genghis Khan, either in size or structure;<br />
and his sons and grandsons themselves lacked the conquering verve of<br />
the successors of Genghis Khan.In this may lie one secret of “Genghisid<br />
charisma,” derived from an altogether unprecedented, and subsequently<br />
unequaled, imperial edifice.<br />
Timur died in 1405 at Otrar – a curious coincidence, for that was the<br />
locality where the incident of 1218 provoked Genghis Khan’s invasion
126 A history of Inner Asia<br />
of Transoxania – as he was poised to launch his planned “conquest of<br />
China.” A brief feud for succession ensued, and ended with the victory<br />
of his son Shahrukh (1409–47).<br />
the timurids<br />
The realm which Shahrukh inherited included Transoxania,<br />
Khwarazm, Fergana, Khurasan, and Iran – an extensive territory by<br />
most standards, but not by those of the empire bequeathed by Genghis<br />
Khan to his sons; above all, its subsequent evolution was one of shrinkage,<br />
not continuing expansion as in the case of the second and third generation<br />
Genghisids.<br />
Shahrukh’s capital was not Samarkand but the Khurasanian city of<br />
Herat.All his principal successors resided there (except for the brief<br />
interlude of Ulugh Beg in Samarkand from 1447 to 1449), and that was<br />
where the political center of the Timurid empire had moved.<br />
Transoxania, with Samarkand as its capital, came to play a secondary<br />
but still important role.The Timurids after Timur, as we have pointed<br />
out, stood out not as conquerors but as patrons of the arts and science<br />
to a degree that makes the century of their rule, the fifteenth, the pride<br />
of Islamic civilization and of the peoples of Central Asia.At the same<br />
time we notice two distinct stages in this flowering: that of the first half<br />
of the century in Samarkand, and that of the second half in Herat.<br />
Another binary feature here is the coexistence of two strains of high<br />
culture, the established Persian one and the new Turkic one.<br />
With Shahrukh, the Timurids of Khurasan and Iran also began to<br />
emancipate themselves from the Genghisid charisma that had still<br />
seemed to hypnotize Timur himself: for the ruler in Herat no longer felt<br />
any need for a Genghisid puppet sovereign in whose name he would<br />
reign.Instead, Shahrukh ruled fully in his own right under the more<br />
standard Islamic title of sultan, and it was with him that the remarkable<br />
symbiosis of Perso-Islamic administrative and cultural traditions with<br />
the customs and methods of the still largely tribal and nomadic Turco-<br />
Mongols came to full fruition.One of the Turco-Mongol methods of<br />
government was family rule, the division of the kingdom into appanages<br />
to be governed by various members of the royal family.The empire<br />
which Genghis Khan bequeathed as so many uluses to his sons is the most<br />
striking if rather special example, and the successors of Timur present<br />
a somewhat similar though more fragmented and less successful picture:<br />
for although the conqueror divided his empire among his sons and
Timur and the Timurids 127<br />
grandsons in a manner reminiscent of Genghis Khan’s, the resulting<br />
structure lacked the initially genuine solidity, sophistication, and discipline<br />
of the Mongol edifice.Each such act of bestowal, known in the<br />
Timurid period by the Turkic term of soyurghal, transferred too much<br />
administrative, fiscal, and hereditary independence to the grantee,<br />
without integrating his appanage into an overall structure such as had<br />
proved its worth under Genghis Khan’s sons Chaghatay, Ögedey, and<br />
Toluy.The practice of soyurghal, although reminiscent of the iqta<br />
system of central Islamic lands on the one hand and of European feudalism<br />
on the other, retained its own physiognomy of excessive autonomy<br />
and military independence that contributed to the recurring wars<br />
among the numerous recipients, who coveted their relatives’ possessions<br />
or tried to substitute their own rule for that of the ruling monarch.<br />
Shahrukh expended much energy on efforts aimed at subduing rebellious<br />
nephews in Iran.<br />
One fortunate exception was his own son Ulugh Beg (1394–1449) in<br />
Samarkand; this prince, while never disloyal, ruled as the virtual<br />
monarch of Transoxania.That is the lesser reason for which he deserves<br />
our attention, however.It is his career and achievements as a mathematician<br />
and astronomer and as a patron of other scientists that make him<br />
stand out not only among his Muslim contemporaries, but also among<br />
his learned peers elsewhere, including those of Europe.<br />
Ulugh Beg was born at Sultaniya, a town in northwestern Iran near<br />
the road from Tehran to Tabriz.Sultaniya is noteworthy for the splendid<br />
mausoleum built there for the Ilkhanid Öljeytü by 1313.This at first<br />
sight surprising birthplace was characteristic of the prince’s childhood,<br />
during which he usually participated in Timur’s far-flung military campaigns.The<br />
great conqueror was also a doting grandfather, and he saw<br />
to it that expert preceptors gave the child an excellent classical Islamic<br />
education, with the standard solid grounding in Arabic and Persian.By<br />
the time the boy was ten, Timur had given him as soyurghal the northeastern<br />
portion of his empire, including the city of Tashkent and extending<br />
into Moghulistan – the latter area later to be reclaimed by its<br />
Chaghatayid rulers.The next year Timur died, however, and it was<br />
Ulugh Beg’s luck that his own father, Shahrukh, emerged victorious from<br />
the struggle for succession in 1409.The youth was still too inexperienced<br />
to withstand envious relatives by himself, and it took Shahrukh’s intervention<br />
in 1411 to install him definitively as the subordinate but soon for<br />
all practical purposes independent ruler of Transoxania, with<br />
Samarkand as its capital.
128 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Ulugh Beg soon revealed where his main interests lay when by 1420<br />
he built a remarkable madrasa in Samarkand.It was one of three such<br />
schools erected by him: of the other two the first was in Bukhara (built<br />
in 1417), the second in Gijduvan (also spelled Ghijduvan, Ghijduwan,<br />
Gizhdavan, etc.; for the sake of consistency, we shall always use the form<br />
Gijduvan), a locality to the northeast of Bukhara (built in 1433).<br />
Madrasas, as we have said, were the highest institutions of learning in<br />
the Islamic world, a counterpart to Europe’s universities, but their main<br />
mission was to train theologians and legal experts; the exact sciences<br />
were either absent or had a minor place in their curricula.Ulugh Beg’s<br />
madrasa in Samarkand, however, became a famous center of mathematics<br />
and astronomy.Like some of our modern institutions, it had a<br />
real astronomical observatory, which was built by the Timurid prince on<br />
the outskirts of the city in 1428 at a place called Kuhak (“Hill”) – in Tajik<br />
and Chopanata in Uzbek.<br />
Before giving full vent to his temperament as a scholar and patron of<br />
scholars, however, Ulugh Beg tried his hand at military campaigns<br />
against his neighbors: a quite devastating one against the Chaghatayid<br />
Shir Muhammad, Khan of Moghulistan in 1424, and another against<br />
the Juchid Baraq, Khan of the Golden Horde, in the Dasht-i Kipchak<br />
in 1427.The latter war turned out to be a disaster, and Ulugh Beg barely<br />
escaped alive.This defeat was a blessing in disguise, for the prince henceforth<br />
gave up war and politics, for which he had inherited none of his<br />
grandfather’s genius, and took up science, to his own benefit and that of<br />
the world of learning.<br />
The main importance of the Samarkand madrasa lay in the scholarly<br />
activities taking place there, but it was remarkable also as a building.Its<br />
general structure is that of most madrasas: a rectangular complex of<br />
buildings enclosing a courtyard, with cells for students, one or more<br />
lecture halls, and a mosque as the essential components.Ulugh Beg’s<br />
madrasa is distinguished for its spacious ground plan (81m by 56m), its<br />
location on the Rigistan or main square of Samarkand, and the complexity<br />
and wealth of its specific features and decorations.It faces the<br />
square with an imposing pishtak or entrance facade; the visitor passes<br />
through a front hall into one of the four lecture rooms located on each<br />
of the four sides of the school; if he proceeds farther, he enters the<br />
square courtyard (30m on each side), which he can cross in order to<br />
reach the lecture room at the end of the structure and, behind it, the<br />
mosque; the latter is an elongated prayer room (22m by 8m).The courtyard<br />
is lined by two floors of fifty units of living quarters for students and
Timur and the Timurids 129<br />
faculty, for this madrasa, like most others, also functioned as a boarding<br />
school.Each unit, apparently housing two students, consisted of a closet,<br />
a bedroom, and a living room.At each of the four corners of the entire<br />
complex stood a minaret.The walls are decorated with several types of<br />
tiles and bricks of exquisite design and workmanship.The school also<br />
had a hammam (bath) noted for its beautiful mosaics.Finally the inscriptions<br />
adorning the building, some bearing Ulugh Beg’s name, others<br />
making such statements as “The search for knowledge is every Muslim’s<br />
duty,” deserve attention.<br />
The school’s main interest of course rests on the accomplishments of<br />
the scholars whom Ulugh Beg gathered there.It included such mathematicians<br />
and astronomers as Kadizade Rumi, a Turk from Bursa,<br />
Ghiyath al-din Kashi, a Persian from Kashan, and Ali Qushchi, a<br />
Central Asian Turk and thus the prince’s compatriot.Both the origins<br />
and eventual destinies of these people are revealing for the cosmopolitan<br />
intellectual climate then prevailing in the Dar al-Islam.The community<br />
could achieve brilliant results in the exact sciences that still matched<br />
those of contemporary Europe, if it was stimulated by an inspired<br />
sponsor like Ulugh Beg.Without such support, however, scientists had<br />
little institutional framework within which to develop and flourish.<br />
Moreover, in Central Asia they had to compete not only with conventional<br />
learning represented by the madrasa as a theological seminary,<br />
but also with a rising tide of religious fervor that found its growing institutional<br />
framework in the form of a new Sufi order, the Naqshbandi<br />
tariqa of dervishes.After Ulugh Beg’s time, it was the latter – about<br />
whom more will be said below – who set the intellectual tone in their<br />
society.This is also reflected by the example of Ali Qushchi: the noted<br />
mathematician left Samarkand for Tabriz and ultimately was invited to<br />
Istanbul by another enlightened sponsor, the Ottoman sultan Mehmet<br />
the Conqueror.<br />
The achievements of the Samarkand group are intimately linked with<br />
the aforementioned observatory, about which a few words should be said<br />
as well.First of all, it must be emphasized that we are dealing with the<br />
period before the invention of the telescope (Galileo was the first to use<br />
this instrument in 1609).Secondly, the Samarkand observatory had by<br />
the nineteenth century so completely disappeared that only archeological<br />
excavations undertaken in 1908 managed to identify its location and<br />
unearth its extant portion.Subsequent study has led to the partial reconstruction<br />
of a giant quadrant whose segment measured 40.2 meters; it<br />
was aligned along the meridian with its southern segment consisting of
130 A history of Inner Asia<br />
an underground gallery; its presumed northern segment would have<br />
risen to a height of 30 meters above the ground.A circular structure,<br />
three storeys high (30.4m), is believed to have surrounded it, and to have<br />
housed a number of other astronomomical instruments.Observations<br />
carried on here by Ulugh Beg together with his colleagues eventually<br />
produced the famous Zij-i Gurgani (also called Zij-i Jadid-i Sultani) a book<br />
consisting of two parts: a theoretical introduction written in Persian, and<br />
a catalog of 1,018 fixed stars together with tables of the planets, of calendar<br />
calculations, and of trigonometry.The whole work – in particular<br />
the catalog – was based on Islamic and classical astronomy whose<br />
ultimate authorities were Hipparchos and Ptolemy, but it corrected or<br />
updated them.This was its value, which Europe’s scientists came to<br />
appreciate and exploit for their own rapidly improving work.I.Greave<br />
published the first Latin translation of the Zij-i Gurgani as Binae tabulae<br />
geographicae, una Nassir-Eddini Persae, altera Ulug-Beigi Tartari (London,<br />
1652), and T.Hyde followed with his version, Tabulae longitudinis et latitudinis<br />
stellarum fixarum ex observatione Ulug-beigi (Oxford, 1665); the Polish<br />
astronomer Jan Hevelius (1611–87) included substantial parts from it in<br />
his Atlas firmamenti stellarum; and even after all these stages were superseded<br />
by newer data, Ulugh Beg continued to receive recognition as one<br />
of the trailblazers in man’s discovery of nature.Ulugh Beg and his<br />
school also made remarkable discoveries in mathematics and trigonometry,<br />
such as the solution of the third-degree algebraic equation.<br />
Along with these activities, Ulugh Beg displayed a breadth of vision<br />
that encompassed other, more traditional fields of Islamic learning and<br />
art.He paid attention to religious sciences, apparently memorizing the<br />
Koran in all the seven established textual traditions; and like virtually<br />
every educated Muslim of his milieu, he appreciated and wrote poetry<br />
and – a less common feature – composed music.His activity as a composer<br />
reveals that the Timurid prince’s life was not all science and religion<br />
but included times of relaxation and perhaps even revelry, in which<br />
wine was no stranger.Finally Ulugh Beg also fostered the study and<br />
writing of history; in this he rivaled several other Timurid rulers, beginning<br />
with Timur himself, but he was less lucky: the Ulus-i arbaa-i Jingizi<br />
(The Four Genghisid Fiefdoms), written in Turki, may have been a valuable<br />
complement to Rashid al-Din’s and Juvayni’s famous works, but it<br />
has survived only in a few abridged manuscripts.<br />
Ulugh Beg should have ascended his father’s throne at Herat when<br />
Shahrukh died in 1447, and he did indeed make a briefly successful<br />
attempt to do so; but here again this grandson of Timur showed that he
Timur and the Timurids 131<br />
had inherited none of his ancestor’s political and psychological acumen.<br />
For although he won the ensuing struggle militarily in a battle fought<br />
near Herat in the spring of 1448 against his nephew Ala al-Dawla, he<br />
failed to give adequate credit to his elder son Abd al-Latif for the victory.<br />
Instead, he showed undisguised preference for his younger son Abd al-<br />
Aziz.This was followed by another injustice and a fatal blunder: the<br />
injustice was to deprive Abd al-Latif of the treasury which he had gathered<br />
in Herat; the blunder was to return with Abd al-Aziz to Samarkand<br />
while leaving Abd al-Latif as governor in Herat.Ulugh Beg thus provoked<br />
an intense hatred on the part of his elder son while leaving him<br />
in a position to take revenge.The inevitable clash occurred a year later,<br />
when Abd al-Latif marched on Samarkand with an army and defeated<br />
his father in September 1449.Ulugh Beg returned to the city as a virtual<br />
fugitive and eventual prisoner of his irate son; worse still, the religious<br />
authorities, never fond of the prince-scientist, issued a fatwa (legal ruling)<br />
mandating his deposition and execution.Ulugh Beg, in a manner not<br />
uncommon in similar situations, had meanwhile set out on a pilgrimage<br />
to Mecca.He was arrested a short distance from Samarkand and<br />
beheaded on 27 October 1449.He was accorded the proper burial,<br />
however: in Timur’s own mausoleum, the Gur-i Emir, where he thus<br />
joined his illustrious grandfather and other principal members of the<br />
family: his cousin Muhammad Sultan, his uncle Miranshah, and his<br />
father Shahrukh.He lay there undisturbed until 1941, when a team of<br />
Soviet archeologists led by the Uzbek scholar T.N.Kari-Niyazov opened<br />
his sarcophagus.They found the skeleton as the historical sources had<br />
led them to expect, with the head severed by what must have been a blow<br />
with a sword.Following a technique devised by Soviet anthropologists,<br />
A.V.Oshanin studied the physiognomy of the skull, and his colleague<br />
M.M.Gerasimov then sculpted a reconstruction of Ulugh Beg’s face.<br />
While Ulugh Beg was launching his and his team’s scientific workin<br />
Samarkand, in Herat his younger brother Baysunghur (1397–1433), who<br />
seemed to be the favorite of their parents, Shahrukh and Gawhar Shad,<br />
also displayed a genius for culture and the arts.Both brothers revived and<br />
brought to new heights several branches of learning and art.Ulugh Beg<br />
created an ambience that made it possible for Islamic astronomy to reach<br />
back to its earlier achievements and raise it to a still higher level.<br />
Baysunghur focused on the classical epic of Iran, Firdawsi’s Shahname,<br />
and in 1426 sponsored the compilation of what we might call a critical<br />
edition, providing it with an introduction that included the poet’s biography,<br />
and had his calligraphers and painters produce splendid copies of
132 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the work; this meant a rebirth of Persia’s national heritage after the traumatic<br />
centuries of destruction wrought by Genghis Khan and, ironically,<br />
Timur.The prince himself appears to have been an accomplished calligrapher,<br />
besides gathering other such artists around him; it is said that for<br />
the blue decorations in thuluth and kufi scripts on the mosaics of the great<br />
mosque his mother had built in Meshed, the architect Kivam al-din<br />
Tayyan used a pattern drawn by the prince.Baysunghur died at the early<br />
age of 37, apparently felled by the excesses of a boisterous life that<br />
included inordinate drinking, a widespread penchant among the Turco-<br />
Mongols.<br />
We have already pointed to the relative tranquillity of the Timurid<br />
empire under Shahrukh, especially striking when we compare it to<br />
Timur’s far-flung campaigns or to the grandiose conquests realized by<br />
Genghis Khan’s sons and grandsons.This static state or even shrinkage,<br />
as we have implied, was more than offset by the cultural flowering,<br />
reconstruction, and well-being of the population.A fusion, complementary<br />
evolution, or sheer coexistence of a complex and multifaceted<br />
society with recognizable or even salient strains of Arab, Persian, and<br />
Turkic elements, this was a renaissance of Central Asia after the cataclysm<br />
of the Mongol invasion.One of the aspects of this peace and prosperity<br />
was further flourishing of long-distance trade on the Silk Road,<br />
which at this time seems to have involved even diplomatic and cultural<br />
contacts between the Timurids and the Ming dynasty of China.It was<br />
in this context that Shahrukh sent an embassy to Emperor Yung-lo<br />
(ruled 1403–24) in 1420; personal envoys both from Ulugh Beg and<br />
Baysunghur joined the mission, and one of the latter, Khwaja Ghiyath<br />
al-Din Naqqash, left a vivid account of the journey, which followed the<br />
age-old route through the string of oases of Sinkiang on the way to<br />
Kansu and on to Nanjing, the Ming capital.Sinkiang, along with<br />
Moghulistan, was the other remaining part of the possessions of the<br />
incumbent Chaghatayid dynasty, which by then, as we have said, had<br />
also converted to Islam; the conversion facilitated the already natural<br />
trend of this religion to spread eastward, and by the time of the Timurid<br />
mission it had reached the ancient Uighur Buddhist bastion of Turfan,<br />
which was also the easternmost city in Chaghatayid possession; farther<br />
east, the oasis of Hami, although ruled by a local prince, had the Ming<br />
emperor as its suzerain.<br />
Abd al-Latif was himself executed shortly after Ulugh Beg’s murder,<br />
and by all counts the Timurid dynasty should have fallen prey to the<br />
rapidly rising power of the nomadic Uzbeks of the Dasht-i Kipchak
Timur and the Timurids 133<br />
then and there.The Uzbek khan, Abulkhayr (ruled 1428–68), however,<br />
contented himself with helping another Timurid, Abu Said (ruled<br />
1451–69), gain the throne in Samarkand, thus deferring a takeover that<br />
would be carried out half a century later by his grandson Muhammad<br />
Shaybani.<br />
Shahrukh’s death in 1447 and Ulugh Beg’s murder two years later<br />
thus did not, as they might have done, sound the deathknell of the<br />
dynasty; quite to the contrary, the second stage of the Timurid<br />
florescence was yet to come.In political terms, it is associated with the<br />
rule of Timur’s great-great-grandson Sultan Husayn Bayqara (ruled<br />
1470–1506) and, in a special and indirect manner, with that of a still<br />
later descendant, Zahir al-Din Babur (1483–1530), who succeeded to his<br />
father Umar Shaykh’s soyurghal of Fergana in 1494 but later, in 1526,<br />
founded the empire of the Great Mughals in India.<br />
If we can safely say that despite Baysunghur, the most remarkable<br />
manifestation of the first stage of Timurid cultural florescence occurred<br />
in Transoxania thanks to Ulugh Beg’s and his circle’s scientific achievements,<br />
we must acknowledge that its second and final stage gravitated<br />
toward Herat and the province of Khurasan – excepting the special case<br />
of Babur, which will be treated in due course.The difference was not<br />
only one of geography or period; it was also thematic and linguistic.<br />
Interest in the exact sciences declined after Ulugh Beg, but literature,<br />
poetry, and the arts reached unprecedented excellence.This time the<br />
patrons and their elite went beyond celebrating the heritage of past centuries<br />
such as the Shahname.They created original works of their own;<br />
and both classical and new works were embellished by an ever more<br />
accomplished school of calligraphers, painters, and artists of the book.<br />
Moreover, although much of this culture continued to be Persian in both<br />
theme and language, there also appeared a remarkable blossoming of<br />
literature and poetry in Turkic.Modern scholars call this language and<br />
culture Chaghatay, thus allowing themselves a latitude defensible on the<br />
grounds that this florescence occurred among people once pertaining to<br />
Ulus Chaghatay, the aforementioned Chaghatayid portion of the<br />
Mongol empire; its creators and contemporaries, however, called the<br />
language Turki, and used various terms for themselves according to their<br />
local origin or tribal affiliation.<br />
One of the noteworthy aspects of this stage of Timurid florescence<br />
was its bilingual nature: both Persian and Turki were common currency<br />
at the court of Herat.The most remarkable personage there was a<br />
wealthy native of that city, the poet Mir Ali Shir (1441–1501), better
134 A history of Inner Asia<br />
known by his pen name Navai (“The Melodious One”).This lifetime<br />
friend and informal adviser of Sultan Husayn Bayqara was a Chaghatay<br />
Turk like the sovereign, although he did not belong to the Turco-Mongol<br />
tribal aristocracy but was descended from the Uighur bakhshi (scribal)<br />
class.He wrote in both Turki and Persian, using the pen-name Fani<br />
(“One who has reached the state of fana or separate existence in God,”<br />
a Sufi concept) in the latter case; but especially his poetry in Turki<br />
became a source of delight and inspiration throughout the Turkic world.<br />
Its importance, however, was not confined to enjoyment and aesthetics;<br />
for it played a catalytic role in the crystallization of Turki as a major literary<br />
language, and in fact as proof that Turkic high culture too had<br />
come of age and could safely take its place beside Persian.<br />
The poet himself may have consciously pursued this goal, and indeed<br />
indirectly admitted as much by writing a prose treatise in Turki to which<br />
he gave the Arabic title Muhakamat al-lughatayn (“Arbitration between the<br />
two languages”).The two languages are Turki and Farsi (Persian), and<br />
Mir Ali Shir endeavors to demonstrate that Turki has an edge over its<br />
senior partner in expressiveness and in wealth of vocabulary.From<br />
among his works of poetry, two stand out: the Khamsa, and the Khazain<br />
al-maani.The Khamsa (an Arabic word based on the number five, translatable<br />
as “Quintet”) is a cycle of five lyrico-epic poems modeled on the<br />
work of the Persian poet Nizami (1141–1203).Choosing famous models<br />
and reworking them in a new fashion was customary, and the challenge<br />
lay in the originality and mastery displayed in the reworking; Navai,<br />
according to both contemporary and modern critics, more than met that<br />
challenge.The Khazain al-maani (again an Arabic title, as was customary:<br />
“Treasure-troves of meanings”), on the other hand, has a less obvious<br />
model; for it consists of four divans or collections of lyrico-philosophical<br />
poems composed at various periods but organized in this fashion, by<br />
Navai himself, toward the end of his life; their Arabic titles hint at the<br />
contents: Gharaib al-sighar (“Oddities of childhood”), Navadir al-shabab<br />
(“Curiosities of adolescence”), Badai al-vasat (“Splendors of adulthood”),<br />
and Favaid al-kibar (“Benefices of maturity”).<br />
Navai’s importance, however, lay not only in his own compositions but<br />
also in the role he played as the dean of the literary and artistic circle<br />
gathered around Sultan Husayn Bayqara; its intellectual splendor shone<br />
far beyond the confines of the Timurid realm, and especially the poetry<br />
and art of the book that were flourishing in Herat inspired appreciation<br />
and emulation throughout the Turco-Persian Islamic world, from India<br />
to Ottoman Turkey and Mamluk Egypt.Finally, mention should also be
Timur and the Timurids 135<br />
made of Navai the citizen; for he used his wealth to finance and endow<br />
extensive public works and religious as well as utilitarian buildings.The<br />
respect and popularity he enjoyed both at court and among the people<br />
surpassed that of any other contemporary, and the grandiose funeral<br />
organized by the sultan, whom he predeceased by five years, is vividly<br />
described by a participant, the historian Khwandamir.<br />
We have emphasized the “Turkicness” both of Navai and of the<br />
Turco-Mongol, originally tribal aristocracy that ruled the Timurid<br />
realm, with the sultan at the top.This should not obscure the fact,<br />
however, that its high culture remained essentially Arabo-Persian, with<br />
the Persian dimension dominant.The corpus of Navai’s poetry is mainly<br />
Turki in language, but the form is Persian; elements of Turkic folk poetry<br />
and lore play a secondary role, and endeavors to discern specifically<br />
Turkic concepts in works like the poet’s Khamsa have yielded inconclusive<br />
results.Moreover, many personalities of the Timurid florescence were<br />
exclusively Persian in language and form; although again their sponsors<br />
and audience were of the characteristic Turco-Persian type that dominated<br />
the core of the eastern Islamic world at this time.The poet Jami<br />
(1414–92) and the painter Bihzad (d.1537) can serve here as examples.<br />
Jami, a native of Khargird near Herat, moved to the Timurid capital<br />
when his father became a professor at one of the madrasas there.He<br />
himself attended this school and eventually entered the same profession,<br />
but not before he had proved to possess a vaster vision and intellect.He<br />
first went to Samarkand to study the exact sciences, especially mathematics,<br />
at the famous madrasa of Ulugh Beg.Later, in his middle age,<br />
Jami again left for Transoxania, primarily to seek out the company of<br />
the Naqshbandi shaykh Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar (1404–90; see<br />
below).This happened while the two core provinces of the Timurid<br />
realm, Transoxania and Khurasan, were ruled by the same sovereign for<br />
the last time; for after Abu Said’s death (1469) his son Ahmad succeeded<br />
him in Samarkand, whereas Herat fell to Husayn Bayqara.Jami did not<br />
return forthwith to his hometown but accompanied Khwaja Ahrar to<br />
Tashkent and Farab.He did so because of the attraction that this Sufi<br />
dervish and his tariqa exercised on him.Sultan Husayn not only did not<br />
hold this absence against him, but honored him even more profusely<br />
after his return to Herat, for by then Jami had gained renown as the<br />
other great poet of his time.<br />
The manuscripts of some of Jami’s works were copied and illustrated<br />
by the foremost calligraphers and miniaturists of the time.One of the<br />
latter may have been Bihzad (b.after 1450, d.1537), whose fame rose to
136 A history of Inner Asia<br />
almost legendary proportions.His professional life falls into two halves:<br />
the years of apprenticeship and prime florescence in Herat (from the<br />
1480s to 1510), and those of later maturity and old age in Tabriz<br />
(1510–1537).Otherwise little is known of his personal life; even his<br />
ethnic identity is uncertain, for the customary assumption that Bihzad<br />
was an Iranian – perhaps fostered by what must have been a pseudonym,<br />
“The Well-born One” – is not necessarily correct, and he may have had<br />
Turkic ancestry.It is significant that to his contemporaries, whether<br />
Timurid, Safavid, Ottoman or other, this did not matter; matters of<br />
ethnic pride had a different ring then, and the special case of Navai’s<br />
and Babur’s predilection for Turki should not mislead us.Bihzad was a<br />
painter cherished by the elite and courted by rulers of any linguistic or<br />
even denominational persuasion, from the Timurids to their rivals the<br />
Shaybanids to the latter’s arch-enemies the Safavids.Like other Muslim<br />
painters of his time, Bihzad concentrated chiefly on book illustration,<br />
but separate scenes and even portraits on loose sheets and medallions<br />
have also survived: thanks to him we thus have pictures of such personalities<br />
as Sultan Husayn Bayqara and the Uzbek ruler Muhammad<br />
Shaybani, and what may have been a self-portrait.In general, however,<br />
most of his work consisted of illustrating such classics of Persian literature<br />
as Nizami’s Khamsa or Sadi’s Bustan.Bihzad is praised for a mastery<br />
both of attention to details such as facial expression and of superb composition<br />
depicting dramatic battle scenes and tender romances, besides<br />
a tasteful combination of color with a special role assigned to blue.The<br />
Timurid painter’s almost proverbial fame served as a symbol for the<br />
excellence of the book arts of his time, and for the legacy he left through<br />
his disciples and influence, especially in sixteenth- and seventeenthcentury<br />
Bukhara and Tabriz.<br />
Our discussion of the highlights of Timurid civilization could logically<br />
conclude with Zahir al-Din Babur (1483–1530) and his great autobiography,<br />
the Baburname.Let us first glance at the political and social<br />
evolution of Transoxania and the rest of Inner Asia in the course of the<br />
fifteenth century.<br />
We have already mentioned Abu Said, a nephew of Ulugh Beg and<br />
thus Timur’s great-great-grandson (1424–69), who by 1451 emerged as<br />
the victor in the contest for Ulugh Beg’s succession in Transoxania,<br />
partly thanks to the help he had received from the Uzbek khan<br />
Abulkhayr.Quite naturally Abu Said wished to inherit the totality of the<br />
Timurid realm, besides coveting Herat as the most prestigious city.He<br />
lost the prize to his cousin Abu l-Qasim Babur, but he resumed the strug-
Timur and the Timurids 137<br />
gle after the latter’s death in 1457 and finally succeeded; this meant that<br />
from 1458 to 1469, the core of the former Timurid empire was again<br />
and for the last time united under the same sovereign, and Abu Said had<br />
reasons for satisfaction; for despite recurrent rebellions and invasions<br />
from restless relatives and nomadic Uzbeks, Moghuls – the Turco-<br />
Mongols of Moghulistan – and Kalmyks, there was relative peace and<br />
prosperity in Khurasan and Transoxania.This reflected, for example,<br />
the praiseworthy interest that Abu Said took in measures designed to<br />
improve agriculture, both through more humane taxation of peasants<br />
and through irrigation projects carried out by an able minister.The<br />
sultan further consolidated his position on the home front by courting a<br />
religious brotherhood that was fast becoming a formidable political and<br />
economic force: the Naqshbandi order of dervishes, in particular its<br />
superior, the aforementioned Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar.A few words<br />
about the origin and subsequent role of the Naqshbandi order up to the<br />
end of the Timurid dynasty may thus be called for.<br />
The eponym of the order, Khwaja Baha al-Din Naqshband<br />
(1318–89), was born in Qasr-i Hinduvan, a village situated a short distance<br />
to the northeast of Bukhara, and spent the greater part of his life<br />
in his birthplace where he was ultimately buried.The shrine that developed<br />
around the saint’s sepulcher became – and is now again after the<br />
Soviet interlude – a famous place of pilgrimage, and led to a change of<br />
the site’s name from “Qasr-i Hinduvan” (“Castle of Indians”) to “Qasri<br />
Arifan” (“Castle of Gnostics,” i.e. Sufis).Like most sedentary inhabitants<br />
of the area, Baha al-Din Naqshband was a Tajik, in other words,<br />
a person of Persian language and culture.His early years – in the 1320s<br />
and 1330s – coincided with the aforementioned expansion of the<br />
Kubravi shrine at Fathabad, and no one could have foreseen that the<br />
youth from the nearby village was going to inspire a Sufi order that<br />
would in due course completely eclipse or absorb the senior tariqa.Yet<br />
he did, and the process shows both features common to those of most<br />
other orders and unique ones.Unlike Najm al-Din Kubra for example,<br />
Baha al-Din Naqshband never traveled to the central Islamic lands in<br />
quest of learning, but received his formation in his hometown of<br />
Bukhara or nearby; and his training, poorly documented, seems to have<br />
had a mystical slant from very early on.He received guidance from<br />
several shaykhs; a crucial role was played by Khwaja Muhmmad Baba<br />
Sammasi, who apparently divined the kernel of sainthood in Baha al-<br />
Din soon after his birth, adopted him, and in due time turned over the<br />
youth’s education to his murid and khalifa Khwaja Amir Kulal.
138 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Sammasi was the fifth khalifa (successor) of Khwaja Yusuf Hamadani,<br />
a Sufi from Merv (d.1147) active mainly in Bukhara.Yusuf Hamadani’s<br />
honorific title, khwaja, subsequently became the hallmark of most of the<br />
shaykhs of the two great Sufi orders, the Naqshbandis and Yasavis, that<br />
were formed by his khalifas (the title, in fact, became an alternative name<br />
for the Naqshbandis as Tariqa-i Khwajagan, “Order of the Khwajas”).<br />
We shall return to the Yasavi order below.Here we want to resume<br />
the story of the Naqshbandis.Khwaja Yusuf Hamadani’s immediate<br />
khalifas – those formed by him personally – had not yet quite coalesced<br />
into a full-fledged tariqa: that role was reserved for Baha al-Din<br />
Naqshband, although even in his case it was more his khalifas, starting<br />
with Khwaja Muhammad Parsa (d.1419), who gave the movement the<br />
palpable structure of a Sufi order.Baha al-Din Naqshband’s chief merit<br />
may be sought in the form of the Sufi path he devised for guiding an<br />
adept toward mystical experience, and in the personal example he gave<br />
as the role model on this path.An original feature of his spiritual development<br />
apparently was its relative independence, or at least little dependence<br />
on living preceptors.The already familiar poet Jami tells us in his<br />
biography of saints Nafahat al-uns that Baha al-Din Naqshband was an<br />
“uwaysi,” a Sufi who could be guided by a master who was absent,<br />
whether in terms of space or time.The master here was Khwaja Abd<br />
al-Khaliq Gijduvani (d.1220), the fourth khalifa of Khwaja Yusuf<br />
Hamadani.Unlike many other Sufi shaykhs – including successive<br />
Naqshbandis – who wrote voluminous treatises, Baha al-Din<br />
Naqshband left little written record either about himself or expounding<br />
his path, but Jami was able to base accounts attributed to him on the<br />
memories recorded or passed on by the shaykh’s disciples.<br />
Jami narrates a number of short question and answer excerpts in<br />
which Baha al-Din, in response to questions, expounds the methods of<br />
his Sufi path.Its main elements were “reclusion in the community”<br />
(khalvat dar anjuman), “externally amongst people” (bi-zahir ba khalq),<br />
“internally with God” (bi-batin ba Haqq).These seemingly somewhat<br />
contradictory principles are based on the idea that a dervish need not<br />
leave the world in order to attain or retain his retreat conducive to closeness<br />
to God, but that in fact he can live a life externally identical with<br />
that of other people, while his internal life can very well be that of a<br />
devout ascetic committed to God.An important concomitant was the<br />
practice of silent zikr (zikr-i khafi).As we have said in the introductory<br />
chapter, zikr, “remembrance [of God by repeating – sometimes for<br />
extended periods – the words La ilaha illa Allah, ‘There is no divinity but
Timur and the Timurids 139<br />
Allah’],” is an essential element in Sufi religious practice and thus in the<br />
practice of virtually every tariqa.Most orders do this by means of vocal<br />
litanies (zikr-i jahri) performed in unison by groups of dervishes, but Baha<br />
al-Din Naqshband came to prefer the above-mentioned silent zikr, zikri<br />
khafi, a practice an individual can engage in mentally, with no participation<br />
or interference from the external world – and thus do it under<br />
practically any circumstances.<br />
These radical and hitherto atypical principles or methods were to<br />
have far-reaching consequences for the evolution of sufism in Central<br />
Asia.Baha al-Din Naqshband himself seems to have led a life of<br />
modesty if not seclusion in his home village, except for two pilgrimages<br />
to Mecca and a visit to Herat.He could hardly have foreseen what effects<br />
his charismatic personality and bold innovations (pace Khwaja Abd al-<br />
Khaliq Gijduvani’s admonition to avoid bida, [impious] innovation)<br />
would have.The latter could be rationalized into a system that allowed<br />
subsequent generations of Naqshbandi dervishes to claim a hefty share<br />
in the economic and political life of their society, to form virtual dynasties<br />
of wealthy landowners, businessmen, political advisers or even, on<br />
occasion, rulers.In an inverted or paradoxical sense, it may also have<br />
served them well during the Soviet interlude, when external display of<br />
sufism was in their case not needed for a continuation of their tariqa.<br />
Baha al-Din, in fact, may not have been fully aware that he was founding<br />
a Naqshbandi order.This was not atypical of the founders of other<br />
orders or even of religions, nor was the fact that during the first years<br />
after his death the community of his disciples and the path he had<br />
preached was all but smothered in Bukhara by the mainstream religious<br />
establishment of the ulama, clerics of the secular type.Baha al-Din<br />
Naqshband’s aforementioned khalifa Khwaja Muhammad Parsa (d.<br />
1419) found a more congenial atmosphere in Herat, where Shahrukh<br />
looked with favor on him, and eventually supported his victorious return<br />
to Bukhara.Nevertheless, fifteenth-century Herat overshadowed<br />
Bukhara as a center of Naqshbandi power, chiefly because of the<br />
support received from the Timurid elite of that city.The order also<br />
scored tremendous success in Samarkand, again thanks to the bonds it<br />
forged with the Timurid rulers of Transoxania.Only in the sixteenth<br />
century did the order’s birthplace begin to surpass the other centers, no<br />
doubt because the founder’s shrine reasserted its prestige, but perhaps<br />
even more because the most important Shaybanid rulers resided in<br />
Bukhara; while spiritually spellbound by the shaykhs, they also found it<br />
politically opportune to support them there.
140 A history of Inner Asia<br />
The abovementioned Khwaja Muhammad Parsa is also credited with<br />
having anchored the Naqshbandi tariqa in a firm doctrinal base through<br />
his numerous writings.Of a different but equal importance was<br />
Mawlana Yaqub Charkhi, originally from the Afghan city of Ghazni, for<br />
he was the murshid of the most striking personality among Baha al-Din<br />
Naqshband’s khalifas, the aforementioned Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar<br />
(1404–90).<br />
Khwaja Ahrar was born into a well-to-do family of landowning and<br />
mercantile shaykhs from the village of Baghistan near Tashkent, but he<br />
did his formal studies in Samarkand at a maktab and a madrasa.Attraction<br />
to Sufi ways made him drop the latter school and leave Samarkand for<br />
Herat, the reputed center of Naqshbandi pirs.It was there or, according<br />
to another report, in the nearby province of Chaghaniyan that he linked<br />
up with Mawlana Charkhi.The murid eventually returned to his hometown,<br />
presumably released by his murshid as a mature khalifa and murshid,<br />
and his subsequent trajectory amply corroborated those expectations.<br />
He again left Tashkent, this time definitively for Samarkand, in whose<br />
suburb of Kafshir (now called Kamangaran) he founded a khangah as<br />
the kernel of the Ahrari lodge.<br />
Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar’s charismatic personality gained enormous<br />
prestige, political role and wealth both for him and for his family<br />
as well as for the Naqshbandi tariqa.The shaykh’s intervention may have<br />
contributed to the victory of the Timurid Abu Said in the contest for the<br />
throne in Samarkand in 1451, and his subsequent influence on the ruler<br />
was only matched by that he exercised on Abu Said’s son and successor,<br />
Sultan Ahmad (1469–94).His prestige and activities were far-flung and<br />
included Herat.At both centers he acted as a moral mentor, protector<br />
of the Muslim community, and shrewd businessman, exhorting the<br />
sultans to abolish unlawful taxes and be generous to the Sufis.The<br />
wealth of the order, through waqf endowments, and of his family<br />
through successful business ventures (the two are not always easy to distinguish)<br />
grew exponentially under Khwaja Ahrar’s tutelage, and not<br />
only in Samarkand but in other parts of Central Asia as well.Like the<br />
order’s founder Baha al-Din Naqshband, Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar<br />
was a strong upholder of the sharia and Sunni Islam, and the moral force<br />
the tariqa possessed served the next dynasty, that of the Shaybanids, well<br />
in their life-and-death struggle with the Shii Safavids.<br />
The Ahrari branch of the Naqshbandi tariqa will come up again in<br />
our discussion of the next dynasty to rule Central Asia, the Shaybanids.<br />
Here a few words about the decline and demise of the Timurids in
Timur and the Timurids 141<br />
Central Asia, and about their special reincarnation in India, are needed.<br />
Abu Said’s foreign policy, to use a modern term, brought him a victory<br />
on his most important frontier, for in terms of legitimacy of rule, the<br />
Timurids’ chief rivals were the Chaghatayids of Moghulistan, who<br />
could at any time lay claim to Transoxania as their heirloom; and this is<br />
exactly what Esen Buqa (1434–61) attempted to do.Abu Said stood his<br />
ground on the battlefield, but he also had recourse to a political stratagem<br />
by giving the Moghul khan’s elder brother Yunus, since his childhood<br />
exiled to Shiraz, the means with which to drive Esen Buqa back<br />
and recover the western part of Moghulistan.An alliance ensued<br />
between Abu Said and Yunus Khan (1461–86) that was not only political<br />
and military but also personal, for two of the Timurid’s three sons –<br />
Ahmad and Umar Shaykh – married two of the Chaghatayid’s three<br />
daughters, Mihr Nigar Khanim and Qutlugh Nigar Khanim (the third<br />
daughter, Khub Nigar Khanim, was married to a member of the prestigious<br />
Dughlat clan).The alliance even helped Abu Said to more<br />
effectively block the recurrent raids of the nomadic Uzbeks from the<br />
north across the Syr Darya into Transoxania.The Timurid sultan,<br />
however, took a step – apparently encouraged by Khwaja Ahrar – that<br />
was to be his undoing: he intervened in a war between the two<br />
Turcoman dynasties of northwestern Iran and eastern Anatolia, the<br />
Aqqoyunlu and Qaraqoyunlu, and in 1469 lost both the campaign and<br />
his life.<br />
If Abu Said’s nemesis was the Aqqoyunlu chieftain Uzun Hasan, the<br />
Timurid dynasty succumbed a generation later to another Turkic conqueror,<br />
the Uzbek khan Muhammad Shaybani.Despite his illustrious<br />
Genghisid ancestry, this khan was linguistically a Kipchak Turk and culturally<br />
a devout Muslim.He had spent a part of his youth in Bukhara as<br />
a student of Islamic science and culture, at a time when the Naqshbandi<br />
order of dervishes was in the ascendant throughout the Timurid realm.<br />
Muhammad Shaybani, however, retained his attachment to another<br />
Sufi order, that of the aforementioned Yasaviya.<br />
The Yasaviya could be considered a sister order of the Naqshbandiya<br />
for two reasons: both originated in Central Asia, and both traced their<br />
roots back to the same Sufi master, the aforementioned Khwaja Yusuf<br />
Hamadani.Khwaja Yusuf was a Persian, and, as his nisba suggests, came<br />
from Hamadan.His early training took him to Baghdad, where he<br />
studied the standard Islamic sciences, especially fiqh (jurisprudence)<br />
under the renowned Shafii jurist Abu Ishaq al-Shirazi.He rose in stature<br />
to the point of becoming a teacher himself, but then he abandoned these
142 A history of Inner Asia<br />
formal sciences and chose the Sufi path instead.Rather than attaching<br />
himself to a prominent living master, he came under the spell of a longdeceased<br />
one, Bayezid Bistami (d.874; in this sense he could be considered<br />
an uwaysi, like his spiritual descendant Baha al-Din Naqshband),<br />
whose mystical utterances had inspired successive generations of Sufis<br />
before the actual formation of tariqas.Yusuf Hamadani’s own charismatic<br />
personality gained him a following of disciples and invitations<br />
from other centers of Islamic culture, especially Merv, Herat, and<br />
Bukhara.He lived in what was politically the empire of the Great<br />
Seljuks, and his final years coincided with the reign of Sultan Sanjar and<br />
of his vassals the Qarakhanids – two Turkic dynasties ruling the chiefly<br />
Iranian part of the Dar al-Islam.It was in Bukhara that the shaykh<br />
formed four of his principal khalifas: after the death of the first two,<br />
Ahmad Yasavi was honored with that role in 1160, but did not stay long<br />
there; turning over that function in this still essentially Iranian city to<br />
Abd al-Khaliq Gijduvani, he returned to his hometown of Yasi, presumably<br />
to spread his master’s path among his fellow Turks.The Tariqa-i<br />
Khwajagan, the Path of the Khwajas thus named after its initiators’ title<br />
(that is, after Khwaja Yusuf Hamadani), found its characteristically<br />
Central Asian expression through two branches, the Iranian one starting<br />
with Khwaja Abd al-Khaliq Gijduvani in Bukhara, the Turkic one<br />
with Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi in Yasi.The Iranian branch, as we have<br />
seen, coalesced into a full-fledged tariqa only two centuries later with<br />
Khwaja Baha al-Din Naqshband and then assumed this founder’s name<br />
as the Naqshbandiya; the Turkic branch, on the other hand, flourished<br />
from the beginning as the Yasaviya, and became the great Sufi order of<br />
Central Asian Turks.<br />
Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi did not live long after his return to Turkestan,<br />
for he died in 1166 or 1167 (the Hijra year 562).Those six or seven years<br />
among his countrymen sufficed, however, for the khwaja to gain a great<br />
following of steppe Turks, and he passed the torch to khalifas who<br />
insured the preservation of his memory and of the type of Sufi poetry<br />
he devised for the benefit of unsophisticated but enthusiastic recent converts.The<br />
didactic poems he composed became known as hikmats<br />
(“wisdoms,” a loanword from Arabic), and gained tremendous vogue<br />
among Central Asian Turks, and, through imitators, even among those<br />
of Turkey.In its present form, the Divan-i Hikmat could hardly have been<br />
penned by him or written down by others directly from his utterances.<br />
The earliest extant copies can be dated to the seventeenth century, and<br />
their language is demonstrably not the Turkic of the twelfth century.It
Timur and the Timurids 143<br />
certainly harbors the spirit which inspired the Khwaja and with which<br />
he inspired his followers and imitators, however.<br />
As an organized tariqa, the Yasaviya eventually succumbed to the<br />
Naqshbandiya (or, more exactly, was absorbed by it), but less completely<br />
than the third of the Central Asian tariqas, the Kubraviya.As we might<br />
expect, it retained some of its identity among the Turks of the Kipchak<br />
steppe despite the inroads of the Naqshbandiya.Moreover, Khwaja<br />
Ahmad Yasavi’s enduring example and tomb continued to play their role<br />
as powerful anchors of Islam among the nomads of the Kipchak steppe<br />
or, if we shift the chronological angle, among the Muslim masses of<br />
Kazakhstan and the other Central Asian republics.As in the case of<br />
other Muslim saints, his tomb became the goal of pilgrimage of the<br />
common people as well as the object of veneration and generosity of the<br />
mighty.We have already mentioned the magnificent mausoleum erected<br />
over his tomb by Tamerlane in 1395.A century later Khwaja Ahmad<br />
Yasavi’s example served as inspiration to another conqueror, this time an<br />
Uzbek Turk from the Kipchak steppe – the aforementioned<br />
Muhammad Shaybani.The khan was not only a man of the sword but<br />
also of the pen, the author of politico-religious poetry and treatises<br />
written in Turki.One of this monarch’s ghazals expresses his veneration<br />
for Ahmad Yasavi, and the process that transformed the town of Yasi<br />
into the great place of pilgrimage of Turkestan:<br />
Avliyalar sarvari ol Shah-i Türkistan emish * Yär yüzini nuri tutqan<br />
Mah-i Türkistan emish…<br />
Dedilär: “Qayda barur sen, köp Samarqandda vali!” * Bu Shabani<br />
arzusi Dargah-i Türkistan emish.<br />
(The chief of saints is this Lord of Turkestan * He is the Moon of<br />
Turkestan shining over the face of the earth … People said: “Where are<br />
you going? There are many saints in Samarkand!” * I, Shabani, had one<br />
desire: the Court of Turkestan [i.e., the shrine of Ahmad Yasavi].) 1<br />
1 A.J.E.Bodrogligeti, “Yasavi ideology in Muhammad Shaybani Khan’s vision of an Uzbek<br />
Islamic Empire,” Harvard Journal of Turkish Studies 18 (1994): 41–56.
chapter ten<br />
The last Timurids and the first Uzbeks<br />
Abu Said was succeeded by two of his sons, the aforementioned Ahmad<br />
(ruled 1469–94) and Mahmud (ruled 1494–95), and by the latter’s son<br />
Ali (ruled 1495–1500), pale personalities whose long years of rule may<br />
have been helped – or may have received a special reprieve – by a<br />
contrasting set of circumstances south and north of Transoxania.To the<br />
south of the Amu Darya ruled their pacific relative Sultan Husayn<br />
Bayqara; to the north of the Syr Darya the nomadic Uzbeks, Kazakhs,<br />
Moghuls, and Kalmyks were still too busy fighting each other or consolidating<br />
their newly formed positions to challenge the Timurids beyond<br />
frequent but transitory raids.<br />
We have already mentioned the Uzbek khan Abulkhayr (1412–68;<br />
khan from 1428), who in 1451 helped Abu Said gain the throne in<br />
Samarkand.Abulkhayr had a Genghisid genealogy going back to the<br />
conqueror’s eldest son Juchi, as did most other Genghisids of the Dashti<br />
Kipchak.He traced his descent, however, not through Batu of the<br />
Golden Horde or Orda of the White Horde, but through a younger<br />
brother of theirs, Juchi’s fifth son Shiban.Shiban too had received an<br />
ulus, but farther north, near the southern outcroppings of the Ural<br />
Mountains.His descendants benefited from events which had set the<br />
khans of the White and Golden Hordes – the Ordaids and Batuids –<br />
against each other and which had also provoked Timur’s devastating<br />
intervention in the last years of the fourteenth century, for the<br />
Shaybanids managed to penetrate into what we might call a power<br />
vacuum in the territories of the White Horde all the way to the Syr<br />
Darya.By then the dynasty of the Shaybanids was an extended family<br />
whose various scions were vying for power, with little effect on their<br />
neighbors; but this changed when in 1428 the sixteen-year-old<br />
Abulkhayr was proclaimed khan.<br />
Abulkhayr, despite his illustrious Genghisid ancestry, was a Muslim<br />
and, linguistically and culturally, a Turk, like most Turco-Mongol<br />
144
The last Timurids and the first Uzbeks 145<br />
nomads of the Dasht-i Kipchak; by then this transformation may have<br />
taken hold even among the Moghuls, the Chaghatayids of Moghulistan.<br />
The tribes under his leadership, most of which spoke the Kipchak form<br />
of Turkic, had their own lineages and appellations, but they were also<br />
known by the general name of Uzbek, a word whose origin is a matter<br />
of debate; it may indeed derive from Uzbek (or, more correctly, Özbeg),<br />
khan of the Golden Horde who ruled from 1312 to 1341.Abulkhayr<br />
spent the early years of his reign still deep in the steppe as khan of Tura<br />
and Sibir, rivers and sites just east of the southern Urals; but in 1431 he<br />
swept down beyond the Syr Darya all the way to Khwarazm, where he<br />
seized the city of Urgench.This was a rather eccentric expedition<br />
without lasting results, except as a precedent and proof of what the vigorous<br />
nomads of the steppe were still capable of doing.The aforementioned<br />
intervention of 1451 that enabled Abu Said to win the Timurid<br />
succession in Samarkand was another demonstration of that vigor, and<br />
a preview of a still bolder step that Abulkhayr’s grandson Muhammad<br />
would take half a century later.Abulkhayr, however, perhaps still under<br />
the spell of Timurid prestige, contented himself with moving the political<br />
center of his fiefdom to the right bank of the Syr Darya, where he<br />
secured several key fortified towns and chose one of them, Sighnaq, as<br />
his headquarters.The Uzbek khan’s move made him the immediate<br />
neighbor of Timurid Transoxania and put him almost as close to<br />
Chaghatayid Moghulistan.The implications or potentials of this situation<br />
were, however, suddenly thrown into confusion by the irruption of<br />
the Kalmyks.<br />
This was the first of the three major invasions of these nomads from<br />
the east.The second took place a century later, and the third in the<br />
seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.The Kalmyks were Mongols, but<br />
of a group that differed from those of Genghis Khan in the dialects they<br />
spoke and in the territories they ultimately inhabited; hence also the designation<br />
“Western Mongols,” which the Kalmyks and related tribes have<br />
received in linguistic literature.Once again, the application of their<br />
several ethnonyms is rather confusing and abitrary; Oirats, Ölöts,<br />
Jungars are genuinely Mongol names, whereas Kalmyk has Turkic etymology;<br />
we prefer it here for several reasons.First of all, only those<br />
Western Mongols who penetrated into Central Asia and southern Russia<br />
are normally associated with this name (those who stayed farther east<br />
and had contacts, both peaceful and bellicose, with Eastern Mongols<br />
and China are usually called Oirats or Jungars); it is also for this reason<br />
that Kalmyk is the term most often found in Muslim sources, where it
146 A history of Inner Asia<br />
usually appears, however, as Qalmaq; Kalmyk is the form prevalent in<br />
Russian, while in English the spelling has also appeared as Kalmuck.<br />
The Kalmyk khans began to play a political role in Mongolia soon<br />
after the return of the Genghisid Yüan Mongol dynasty, driven out of<br />
China by the Ming in 1368.They only briefly and marginally rose to<br />
positions of supremacy there, but greater fortunes awaited them farther<br />
west, in Sinkiang and the Kipchak steppe, and even at times in Tibet and<br />
Khwarazm.Their case of course immediately suggests an analogy with<br />
the Genghisid Mongols.It did have similarities, but there were more fundamental<br />
differences: the essential one being the fact that Kalmyk invasions<br />
were of the elemental, common type resulting chiefly from<br />
migrations of whole tribes, not a repetition of the boldly conceived,<br />
carefully planned, yet grandiose conquests that made the events of the<br />
thirteenth century a historically unique phenomenon.The victories,<br />
conquests, and empires realized by the Kalmyks were only a pale shadow<br />
of those achieved by their eastern cousins.In two respects, however, both<br />
groups ultimately experienced a similar fate: abandoning their ancestral<br />
shamanism, they converted to Buddhism; and they ended up paying a<br />
heavy price, demographically, to the demands of their far-flung campaigns<br />
and migrations and of their new religion.Moreover, the third<br />
stage of Kalmyk expansion, directed toward China and Russia, collapsed<br />
in part because radical transformations had begun to tilt the military<br />
balance away from the mobile steppe nomads toward modern<br />
armies of sedentary states equipped with artillery.<br />
In 1456, however, the Kalmyk khan Amasanji, irrupting with his<br />
mounted troops into Moghulistan and the Kipchak steppe, defeated the<br />
similarly armed horsemen, first those of Yunus Khan and then those of<br />
Abulkhayr.The Uzbek chieftain fled to Sighnaq and withstood the<br />
Kalmyk siege, but the defeat meant a fatal blow to his prestige, and he<br />
ceased to play the role that had held such promise for him.An additional<br />
and specific effect of this disaster was the withdrawal of many Uzbek<br />
tribesmen from Abulkhayr’s authority; these nomads joined the followers<br />
of two other Genghisids, Janibeg and Girey, who had recently established<br />
the nucleus of a new khanate farther to the northeast, deeper<br />
within the territory of the former White Horde in what is now central<br />
Kazakhstan.These rebel Uzbeks came to be known as Kazakhs, a word<br />
believed by some to have the same etymology as the Russian “kazak”<br />
and the English “Cossack.” Later, when contacts between Russians and<br />
Kazakhs intensified in the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries,<br />
“Qazaq” sounded to the Russians too much like “Kazak,” and by the
The last Timurids and the first Uzbeks 147<br />
time the territory was annexed to their empire, the conquerors changed<br />
the name of its inhabitants to Kirghiz (Kirgizy) in order to distinguish it<br />
from that of the Cossacks.The real Kyrgyz (to use the latest official –<br />
and indeed correct – spelling) themselves were then called Karakirgizy<br />
(”Black Kyrgyz”) or Dikokamennye Kirgizy (a somewhat unflattering<br />
appellation, approximately meaning “Wild rock Kyrgyz,” possibly a reference<br />
to their mountainous habitat), in distinction from the “Kirghiz,”<br />
that is, Kazakhs.This curious reshuffling of ethnonyms caused endless<br />
confusion in Western travel and even scholarly literature.The restoration<br />
of correct terminology based on the native ethnonyms was one of<br />
the better measures taken by the Soviets at the conclusion of National<br />
Delimitation in 1925.<br />
Luckily for the Timurids, the Kalmyk khan made no serious attempt<br />
to push south of the Syr Darya, and the new threat further diminished<br />
with Amasanji’s death in 1470.Abulkhayr predeceased Abu Said by one<br />
year, in 1468, and for the rest of the century the Uzbeks, Kazakhs,<br />
Moghuls, and Kalmyks were too busy elsewhere, as we have said, to<br />
bother the Timurids.Of Abu Said’s other sons, one, the aforementioned<br />
Umar Shaykh, received as soyurghal Fergana, where he ruled until his<br />
death in 1494.The fiefdom was not the only lot that fell to him; for like<br />
his brother Ahmad, he married a daughter of Yunus Khan (the aforementioned<br />
Qutlugh Nigar Khanim) and thus secured a distaff (cognatic)<br />
Genghisid ancestry for his progeny.As a result, his son Zahir al-Din<br />
Babur, born in 1483, was a Timurid on the sword (agnatic) side and a<br />
Genghisid on the distaff (cognatic) side.By the time Babur died in 1530,<br />
the world had changed beyond recognition, but it is doubtful whether<br />
this ruler himself was aware of these transformations, except for those<br />
upheavals of which he was the unfortunate victim, the reluctant catalyst,<br />
or the inspired creator.His early dream was the Timurid throne in<br />
Samarkand, but both he and the dynasty succumbed in that contest to<br />
the khan of the Uzbeks, Muhammad Shaybani.It was almost as a<br />
refugee that Babur crossed the Hindukush to Kabul with his troops, and<br />
his epic conquest of India, which was consummated with the battle of<br />
Panipat in 1526, never became more than a consolation for him.Babur<br />
defeated the sultan of Delhi, Ibrahim Lodi, and the Great Moghul<br />
Empire of Hindustan was born.He died a mere four years later in Agra,<br />
probably unaware or unconcerned that in the course of his relatively<br />
short life the Europeans had crossed the oceans and had reached India<br />
by rounding Africa, had discovered America, and had circumnavigated<br />
the globe.Nor would he have known that in Europe itself a new world
148 A history of Inner Asia<br />
of another kind was making its first stirrings, a world in which man<br />
would discover his potential for understanding and mastering nature to<br />
a degree undreamt of before.For Babur’s life coincided with a time of<br />
ferment in Europe which we have labeled the Renaissance, a somewhat<br />
inaccurate term because the rebirth of classical or past values was only<br />
the initial aspect of this revolution.
chapter eleven<br />
The Shaybanids<br />
Muhammad (ruled 1500–10), the Uzbek khan who dashed Babur’s lifetime<br />
dream, accomplished more than that, for he put an end to the<br />
Timurid dynasty and replaced it with his own, that of the Shaybanids<br />
(1500–99) and thus carried out a restoration of Genghisid rule in<br />
Central Asia.He was a grandson of Abulkhayr, whose Genghisid<br />
lineage, as we have seen, went back to Genghis Khan’s grandson Shiban.<br />
The nisba derived from the Mongol name was vocalized as Shaybani by<br />
Muslim historians who preferred its unrelated Arabic approximation.By<br />
1501 Muhammad Shaybani had crossed the Syr Darya, seized<br />
Samarkand from Babur’s cousin Ali, and fought off all attempts by<br />
Babur and other contenders to recover their Timurid heirloom; seven<br />
years later, in 1507, he made a successful lunge for the other Timurid<br />
prize, Herat, so that the greater part of Central Asia now passed under<br />
the control of the nomadic Uzbeks from the Kipchak steppe.Up to a<br />
point the change was only one of degree.The Shaybanids were Turks<br />
like the Timurids, although they spoke a different dialect, Kipchak, in<br />
contrast to the local Turki; both led a partly nomadic way of life and had<br />
a tribal social structure, although again this must have been more pronounced<br />
among the newcomers; both were Sunni Muslims, like the bulk<br />
of the sedentary population of the area; and the Uzbeks had been<br />
sufficiently exposed to Arabo-Persian Islamic culture to ensure a fundamental<br />
continuity.The subsequent behavior of the Shaybanids does<br />
indeed reveal more continuity than change, and it may be that our infatuation<br />
with the intellectual brilliance of Timurid Herat and Samarkand,<br />
and our fascination with such figures as Ulugh beg, Husayn Bayqara,<br />
Mir Ali Shir Navai, Bihzad, or Babur, has tended to obscure this<br />
continuity.<br />
In other respects, however, changes were taking place.We have already<br />
referred to the most dramatic and radical changes that were gathering<br />
momentum elsewhere in the world.Although geographically remote,<br />
149
150 A history of Inner Asia<br />
they would eventually have an impact on Central and indeed on much<br />
of Inner Asia.To begin with, the transcontinental Silk Road, whose<br />
principal lines passed through Sinkiang and Transoxania, now had a<br />
European rival in the long-distance maritime route.At its most extreme,<br />
the effect of this change could be viewed as one that transformed a once<br />
busy crossroads of world trade into a landlocked backwater.How much<br />
and how soon this new competition began to affect the economic and<br />
cultural climate of Inner Asia is a matter of debate, and the traditionally<br />
held view that it was responsible for the decline of this part of the<br />
world may have to be modified.The decline did happen, but unevenly,<br />
gradually, or later, and it was a protracted process caused by complex<br />
factors among which the enhanced importance of maritime trading<br />
routes may have played only a marginal role.On the economic level, sixteenth-<br />
and even seventeenth-century Central Asia in fact seems to have<br />
experienced a period of prosperity and growth, due to the internal dynamism<br />
of its agricultural and mercantile population, to the policies of<br />
such rulers as the Shaybanid khan Abdallah II, and to the rise of such<br />
trading partners as Mughal India and imperial Russia.Nevertheless,<br />
some of the seeds of the eventual transformation were sown in the sixteenth<br />
century, but they may be better understood if we substitute the<br />
concept of a decline of the East with that of a rise of the West.On the<br />
one hand, Europe, including Russia, began to undergo a technological<br />
and economic revolution – to be later followed by an industrial and military<br />
revolution – that would dramatically increase its strength but that<br />
was completely missed by the rest of the world; and on the other, a newly<br />
created ideological antagonism between Central Asia and Persia would<br />
gradually contribute to the landlocked region’s cultural provincialism or<br />
atrophy, again a phenomenon that under the Shaybanids was<br />
camouflaged by the influx of luminaries fleeing Safavid persecution.<br />
In 1501, the same year in which Muhammad Shaybani had vanquished<br />
the Timurids and become the sovereign of Transoxania, Shah<br />
Ismail, having overcome the Aqqoyunlu Turcomans in western Iran,<br />
founded a new dynasty, that of the Safavids; their first capital was the<br />
city of Tabriz.Both Muhammad Shaybani and Shah Ismail were Turks,<br />
at least on the linguistic level; and Ismail, like most rulers of Iran since<br />
the Seljukids, based his military strength on Turkic tribal elites and manpower.Both<br />
men claimed Iran as their legitimate prize for a variety of<br />
reasons, one of which was a sense of mission: the Safavids were Shii<br />
Muslims, whereas the Shaybanids were staunchly Sunni, and both sides<br />
claimed to be fighting for a sacred cause.
The Shaybanids 151<br />
The inevitable clash occurred by the end of the decade near Merv;<br />
the Uzbeks lost, and their khan fell on the battlefield.Over the next few<br />
years the shah of Persia tried to press the newly gained advantage<br />
against Muhammad’s successor Köchkunju (ruled 1512–31), but<br />
without avail.The confrontation ended in a lasting stalemate, pitting<br />
schismatic Iran against orthodox Central Asia for 300 years, right down<br />
to the latter’s conquest by Russia in the nineteenth century.Besides<br />
having intrinsically harmful effects (especially on the cultural plane), this<br />
antagonism – although mitigated by periods of peaceful contacts and<br />
even pragmatic cooperation – isolated Central Asia from Turkey and the<br />
Arab lands of the Near East: for hostile and powerful Iran, unified by<br />
the dynamic ideology of Shii Islam, to a considerable degree blocked<br />
direct communications of merchants, pilgrims, and scholars between<br />
the eastern and western parts of the Muslim world.<br />
Shah Ismail was less lucky in the war against his other Sunni adversary,<br />
the Ottoman sultan Selim I, who in 1514 defeated him at<br />
Chaldiran, a locality in eastern Anatolia.The Turkish victory owed<br />
much to powerful artillery, a new weapon that was revolutionizing<br />
warfare in Europe at a time when most Muslim rulers still ignored or<br />
shunned this innovation.<br />
Besides Selim, another exception was Babur, but only after he had left<br />
Central Asia and launched his conquest of India; there, thanks to his<br />
qualities as a leader and to the devotion of his troops, but also to occasional<br />
use of artillery, he defeated larger armies of rajas and sultans supported<br />
by elephants.There are indications that the Timurid – or Mughal<br />
– conqueror acquired this innovation through master armorers who<br />
came from the Ottoman empire.Nevertheless, much as we may find<br />
Babur’s conquest of Hindustan captivating and important, that alone<br />
would not secure him the special place which he occupies among<br />
history’s great figures.He stands out because of the Baburname, an autobiography<br />
compiled partly on the basis of a diary he had kept.Written<br />
in his mother tongue, Turki, it is one of the most original and engaging<br />
prose works of pre-modern Muslim literature, for Babur vividly and<br />
faithfully portrays life as he saw and experienced it, his own and that of<br />
the world around him, whether human or natural.And since it was a<br />
rich life in many ways, the Baburname is also a priceless document for our<br />
study of the period’s society: its natural setting, social customs, political<br />
events, noteworthy personalities, literary and artistic pursuits, not counting<br />
Babur’s own military campaigns and the adventures he encountered<br />
in the process.He himself emerges as a vigorous but compassionate
152 A history of Inner Asia<br />
leader, family man, and friend, and as a perceptive literary critic and<br />
observer of nature.After Babur, the history of the dynasty he founded<br />
at Agra only indirectly and marginally touches upon our theme.His<br />
descendants considered themselves and indeed were Timurids, as well<br />
as Genghisid Mongols, as we have seen; the name “Great Moghuls”<br />
popularized in the days of British rule would have startled them.Turki<br />
must have been spoken among them for at least two more generations.<br />
Bayram Khan (d.1561), a minister who served Babur’s son Humayun<br />
and grandson Akbar, wrote poetry in both that language and Persian.<br />
Gradually, however, as the emperors began to marry Indian women, and<br />
the dynasty adjusted itself to the new milieu, the Persian veneer of<br />
India’s Muslim culture reasserted itself.Thus in 1590 Akbar instructed<br />
the khan-i khanan (prime minister) Abd al-Rahim Mirza, Bayram Khan’s<br />
son and successor, to translate the Baburname into Persian.<br />
The endearingly personal and unusual character of the book is conveyed<br />
right from the start.Babur dispenses with the lengthy conventional<br />
preface so customary in his period, and defines an important date – the<br />
year 1494 – and the milieu in which he spent the first part of his life:<br />
In Ramadan 899, in the province of Fergana, I became king (padishah boldum).<br />
Fergana is one of the provinces of the Fifth Climate.It lies at the edge of the<br />
inhabited world.On the east is Kashgar; on the west, Samarkand; on the south,<br />
the mountains that delimit Badakhshan; on the north, although there used to<br />
be cities like Almaliq and Almaty and Yangi (whose name is recorded in books<br />
as Otrar), [settlements] have been ruined by Mongols and Uzbeks, and none<br />
remain.<br />
It is a small province, abounding in grains and fruits.It is surrounded by<br />
mountains except on the west, where there are Samarkand and Khujand.No<br />
enemy can invade it in winter except from that direction.<br />
The river Sayhun [Syr Darya], known as Khujand River, comes from the<br />
northeast and traverses this province westward.<br />
Babur then describes the provinces, towns, and qualities in charming<br />
detail, and this is what he says about the speech of the people of his<br />
hometown, Andijan:<br />
The people are Turks (Eli Türktür).There is no one who wouldn’t know Turki,<br />
whether among the townspeople or at the bazaar.Their speech is identical with<br />
the written idiom, for the literary compositions of Mir Ali Shir Navai, although<br />
he was born and bred in Herat, are in this language<br />
Both the Baburname and Navai’s works are written in the aforementioned<br />
special kind of Turkic which eventually came to be called
The Shaybanids 153<br />
Chaghatay, especially by modern Turcologists.As we can see from the<br />
quoted passage, Turki was the more common term still in Babur’s time,<br />
and only gradually did it become reserved for the everyday spoken language,<br />
whereas Chaghatay was reserved for the literary idiom.A century<br />
after Babur, another Central Asian prince, Abulghazi Bahadur Khan,<br />
incisively commented on the difference (see below, p.185–86).Babur’s<br />
remark that Navai wrote in Turki, “although he was born and bred in<br />
Herat,” is also significant.This Khurasanian city lay in a Persian-speaking<br />
area, but in Navai’s time it was the capital of the Timurids, whose<br />
court language was primarily that of the Turco-Mongol elite of the time<br />
– Turki.Babur eventually passes to what we could call a “prosopography”<br />
of the Turco-Mongol elite of his time.He appropriately starts with<br />
his father:<br />
[Umar Shaykh Mirza] was born in 860 [1456] at Samarkand.He was Sultan<br />
Abu Said Mirza’s fourth son ...He was a Hanafite, a devout believer, and would<br />
not skip any of the five daily prayers, and throughout his life he made up those<br />
he had missed. He frequently recited the Koran, and was devoted to His<br />
Eminence the Khwaja Ubaydallah [Ahrar].He felt greatly honored by engaging<br />
in discussions with him, and his Eminence the Khwaja in turn addressed<br />
him as “[My] son.” He was fully literate, used to read the two Khamsas1 and the<br />
Masnavi, 2 [but] most of all the Shahname. 3 He had poetic talent, but no ambition<br />
to compose poetry.His sense of justice reached such a degree that [once] when<br />
he received a report that a snowstorm in the foothills to the east of Andijan had<br />
decimated a one-thousand-tents strong caravan coming from China with only<br />
two individuals surviving, he sent tax collectors to record all the assets of the<br />
caravan; although there were no heirs present, he of necessity kept [these<br />
goods] for a year or two, after which he invited them to come and reclaim their<br />
property.<br />
Nevertheless, the sixteenth century was in Central Asia a Shaybanid<br />
century, despite Babur’s valiant efforts to stem the tide.We have suggested<br />
that continuity with the Timurid fifteenth century was stronger<br />
than the innovations introduced by the change of dynasties and by a<br />
renewed influx of nomadic Turkic tribes.After the vain hopes that<br />
Muhammad Shaybani had cherished to found an empire still more legit-<br />
1 The first Khamsa, in Persian, was by the poet Nizami (1141–1209); the second was the aforementioned<br />
Turki version by Navai.<br />
2 Masnavi-i Manavi, a long Sufi poem in Persian composed by Mevlana Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–73).<br />
Nizami was born and spent his whole life in Azerbaijan; Rumi, although born in Balkh, lived<br />
mainly in Anatolia (Rum), then ruled by a local branch of the aforementioned Seljukid dynasty.<br />
3 Firdawsi’s magnum opus.Babur’s remarks illustrate the by then refined, chiefly Persian culture of<br />
the Turco-Mongol elite.
154 A history of Inner Asia<br />
imate than that of the Timurids and to reinstall Sunni rule in Iran, the<br />
khans spent their efforts on reaffirming their hold on Transoxania,<br />
Fergana, and eastern Khurasan.Samarkand and Bukhara took turns or<br />
combined as the ruling family’s capitals, while Balkh became the heir<br />
presumptive’s seat, and Tashkent the center of the fourth major appanage.Most<br />
khans endeavored to stimulate agriculture through new irrigation<br />
works and dams, to encourage the crafts and trade by building<br />
more caravanserais and bridges, and to please God and the religious<br />
class by building more mosques, madrasas, and khangahs, showing<br />
munificence to both the secular clergy and the powerful Naqshbandi<br />
tariqa.They also proved to be respectable patrons of the book arts, in<br />
both the artifactual and literary sense; Tabriz may have been the principal<br />
beneficiary from the collapse of Timurid Herat, with Bihzad and<br />
other craftsmen joining the ateliers of the Safavid rulers, but Shaybanid<br />
Bukhara and Samarkand also received their share.<br />
From among the khans of the dynasty, three may be singled out as<br />
especially prominent: the realm’s founder Muhammad Shaybani or<br />
Shaybak Khan (1500–10), his nephew Ubaydallah Khan (1533–39;<br />
effective ruler since 1512), and Abdallah Khan (Abdallah II, 1583–98;<br />
effective ruler since 1557).<br />
The founder, as we have said, competed with Shah Ismail for the<br />
Timurids’ Iranian heritage and lost both the contest and his life in this<br />
struggle.His successors contented themselves with periodic raids into<br />
Persian Khurasan, although in 1528 the contest just missed a reprise of<br />
1510 when Shah Tahmasp (1524–76) defeated Ubaydallah Khan, this<br />
time partly thanks to the cannon which the Persians learned to appreciate<br />
since the disastrous battle of Chaldiran.Ubaydallah was nevertheless<br />
less reckless, and by the time he added the official title to his effective<br />
exercise of power, he was paying more attention to the conditions in his<br />
own territories.He acquired the reputation of a just and pious ruler, and<br />
his favorite city Bukhara flourished to the point where Shaybanid civilization<br />
came close to a revival of the achievements of the Timurid age.<br />
One example is the splendid Mir Arab madrasa, built in 1535 under the<br />
khan’s auspices but through the direct sponsorship of the shaykhulislam<br />
(chief justice) Mir Arab.This madrasa also served as the final resting<br />
place for both the khan and his cleric; and it was one of the two Islamic<br />
seminaries in Uzbekistan (the other was the Barak Khan madrasa in<br />
Tashkent) which were allowed to function throughout the Soviet period.<br />
Here is what Ubaydallah Khan’s younger contemporary Haydar Mirza
The Shaybanids 155<br />
(1499–1551), the author of the Tarikh-i Rashidi, says about the khan and<br />
Bukhara under his rule: 4<br />
It is my view that in the course of these last hundred years, in the whole world<br />
where there have been sovereigns, none like him has been heard of or seen.First<br />
of all he was a Muslim ruler, devout, pious, abstinent.He scrupulously applied<br />
the tenets of the Holy Law to all matters of religion, confession, commonwealth,<br />
state, the army, and the populace, and would not suffer a deviation from<br />
this law by a hair’s breadth.In the thicket of valor he was [like] a charging lion,<br />
in the sea of generosity his palm was [like] a pearl-bearing shell – an individual<br />
adorned with an array of good qualities.He wrote the seven styles of calligraphy,<br />
the naskh best of all.He copied several exemplars of God’s Word [i.e.the<br />
Koran] and sent them to the two noble cities [i.e.Mecca and Medina].He also<br />
wrote nastaliq well, and had a divan of poetry in Turki, Arabic, and Farsi<br />
[Persian] to his credit.He was versed in the art of music, and his compositions<br />
are [still] sung by musicians.[In short,] he was a sovereign [endowed] with every<br />
kind of laudable quality.In his time, there was such a gathering of learned men<br />
and such a large population in Bukhara, which was his capital, that one was<br />
reminded of Herat in the days of Sultan Husayn Mirza.<br />
Abdallah Khan at first ruled in the name of his father Iskander, whose<br />
succession he secured only after tough competition with several relatives<br />
of the extended dynastic family; for the principle of family rule, characteristic<br />
of Turco-Mongol nomads, still lingered on, and other princes<br />
supported by their parties of Uzbek emirs were ready only too often to<br />
throw off allegiance to the khan or to start claiming the throne for themselves.Even<br />
after the consolidation of his rule and during his official<br />
tenure of office, Abdallah had to wage campaigns to reaffirm his authority.Beyond<br />
the limits of Transoxania to the south, Khurasan remained<br />
the chronic battleground with the Safavids, but just east of there, northern<br />
Afghanistan – the ancient Tokharistan – became a prized Shaybanid<br />
territory.The importance of Balkh, its capital, turned partly on the role<br />
this city came to play as a communications and commercial link between<br />
Central Asia and Timurid or Mughal (“Great Moghul”) India, where<br />
Babur’s antagonism to the Shaybanids gave way, by the time of his<br />
grandson Akbar (1542–1605; ruled from 1556), to friendly relations<br />
which, besides trade, included diplomatic and cultural contacts.A goodneighbor<br />
policy and even alliance and personal contacts also developed<br />
4 Mirza Haydar Dughlat, Tarikh-i-Rashidi: a History of the Moghuls of Central Asia, tr.E.Denison Ross,<br />
London 1898, p.283; and ed.and tr.W.M.Thackston, Harvard University Department of Near<br />
Eastern Languages and Civilizations, 1996, vol.1 (Persian text) pp.233–34; vol.2 (English translation),<br />
p.182.
156 A history of Inner Asia<br />
between the Shaybanids and the Chaghatayids; the latter continued to<br />
rule Moghulistan and the Tarim basin throughout the sixteenth century<br />
and were to do so, although with diminishing authority, even into the<br />
seventeenth.<br />
The Shaybanid century also witnessed a steady growth of<br />
Naqshbandi sufism in Central Asia, with intimate relations between this<br />
order and the khanly families matching or even surpassing those under<br />
the Timurids.The beginnings seemed inauspicious, however.Shaykh<br />
Muhammad Yahya, the son and khalifa of Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar,<br />
may have sided with the opponents of Muhammad Shaybani at the time<br />
of the Uzbek conquest, and the khan, although outwardly deferential to<br />
the shaykh, did not forgive him.Feeling threatened, the dervish resolved<br />
to perform the hajj and set out for Mecca, but did not get far: a party of<br />
soldiers sent by hostile Uzbek emirs overtook him in Khurasan and killed<br />
him, together with his companions including three of his sons.The<br />
khan, although not openly involved in the murder, was suspected of at<br />
least condoning it.<br />
The Ahrari lodge soon recovered from this tragedy.Shaykh<br />
Ubaydallah Ahrar’s prestige among the Uzbeks had even preceded their<br />
conquest of Transoxania, a fact exemplified by the name of Muhammad<br />
Shaybani Khan’s nephew and eventual successor Ubaydallah Khan,<br />
apparently named after the shaykh.The Khwaja’s tomb generated the<br />
growth of the Ahrari shrine, which in turn functioned as the headquarters<br />
of the Naqshbandi tariqa.The Ahraris became a virtual dynasty of<br />
Sufi saints, religious authorities, owners of agricultural and manufacturing<br />
properties not just around the eponymous shaykh’s shrine but in<br />
many other parts of Central Asia.They drew their wealth from their role<br />
as trustees (mutavallis) of the continually growing waqf endowments<br />
serving the shrine and its components, from personal property (milk)<br />
which they were able to accumulate thanks to the largesse of royal as well<br />
as other devout well-wishers, and through the economic activities of<br />
investment, manufacture, and trade they and their agents engaged in.<br />
Uzbek archives contain a number of waqfnames certifying numerous<br />
endowments, as well as other documents revealing the Ahraris’ economic<br />
strength and the respect shown them by the khans.<br />
One such document was issued in 1543 by Abd al-Latif Khan<br />
(1540–52; Ubaydallah Khan’s successor), certifying the ownership and<br />
tax-exempt status of several properties of Shaykh Muhammad Yahya.<br />
This individual was a grandson of Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar and son<br />
and namesake of the founder’s murdered successor.The document can
The Shaybanids 157<br />
also serve as an indicator of the Turkic dimension of this otherwise so<br />
Arabo-Persian cultural atmosphere, for unlike the Qarakhanid waqfname<br />
from the eleventh century written in Arabic, and that from the fourteenth<br />
century written in Persian, this order (nishan or yarliq) is in Turki<br />
(although peppered with Arabo-Persian technical terms).Here are a few<br />
excerpts: 5<br />
We recognize that it befits our lofty discernment to treat with affection,<br />
munificence, respect, consideration, and veneration the great descendants and<br />
noble progeny of His Holiness Khwaja Ubaydallah…[A report] has reached<br />
our august presence that since several years a certain person (bir kishi) has taken<br />
and, contrary to the pure sharia, has held as usufruct (mutasarrif bulghan irmish)<br />
the properties and buildings (amlak va havilar) listed on the back of this document,<br />
– [properties belonging to] Khwaja Muhammad Yahya, may his elevated<br />
status last, who is a grandson of the above-mentioned Holiness ...Since our<br />
generous thought is favorable in the highest degree to the above-mentioned<br />
well-born person, having examined and understood [the situation] ...we seize<br />
and give [this grantee] as soyurghal (musallam tutub soyurghab birdik) the properties<br />
and objects, orchards, store, and houses with yards ...so that the representatives<br />
of this high person annually receive the tithe (dahyak) and double tithe<br />
(dahdu) of the revenue, and expend it on their sustenance ...[Moreover, tax<br />
collectors] must not levy taxes (mal) [of any kind on these properties] – such as<br />
the double tithe (mal-i dah-du), the extraordinary expenditure tax (kharj-i kharajat-i<br />
avariz), bikar (unemployment tax?), [impose] corvée (hashar), homestead tax<br />
(dudi), tithe (dahyazdah), gift (savari), wedding tax (madad-i toyana), victory tax<br />
(fathana), or any [other] tax imposed on this province ...[The properties in question]<br />
should be known as free and exempt ...And if there is a general levy (Agar<br />
harz-i kull bulsa), the perceptor and scribe (harraz va bitikchi) must not enter [these<br />
properties] in order to [include them in the] collection ...[These officials] must<br />
not act contrary to [our] order (yarlighin khilaf itmesinlär), and must not request<br />
[every] year a new order and regulation (nishan va parvancha) ...[This] order<br />
(nishan) was issued (lit.written, bitildi) on the third [day] of the month of<br />
Shawwal, the year of the hare (tavushqan yil), the date being 950 [of the Hijra;<br />
30 December 1543].<br />
Another illustration of the status, vitality and adaptability of Ahrari<br />
shaykhs is the fact that they retained the benefits of royal favors throughout<br />
the vicissitudes of Central Asian politics, when power passed from<br />
one branch of the Shaybanids to another, and, at the turn of the century,<br />
from the Shaybanids to the Toqay-Timurids.Their authority even<br />
invaded the hitherto unchallenged preserve of the secular clergy, for in<br />
5 Published, together with a Russian translation and commentary, by Olga D.Chekhovich,<br />
Samarkandskie dokumenty XV-XVI vv.: O vladeniyakh Khodzhi Akhrara v Sredney Azii i Afghanistane<br />
(Moscow, 1974), doc.16 on pp.311–15.
158 A history of Inner Asia<br />
1580 Khan Abdallah II transferred the office of shaykhulislam of<br />
Samarkand to them.This office, somewhat comparable to that of our<br />
Supreme Court, was then occupied by the Ahraris on a hereditary basis<br />
at least until the end of the seventeenth century.<br />
The Ahraris, however, did not retain a monopoly on dynastic prominence<br />
and wealth among the Naqshbandis.First of all, the shrine that<br />
developed around the tomb of Baha al-Din Naqshband near Bukhara<br />
possessed an implicit primacy over the Ahrari shrine near Samarkand,<br />
a fact illustrated by the choice of the more important Shaybanid khans<br />
to be buried at Qasr-i Arifan near the “Great Khwaja’s” sepulcher.<br />
Secondly, at least two other dynasties of Naqshbandi shaykhs arose in<br />
the course of the sixteenth century and came to play significant roles.<br />
The founder of one of these dynasties was Ahmad Khwajagi Kasani,<br />
also known as “Makhdum-i Azam” (“The Great Master”; 1461–1542).<br />
As his nisba suggests, he hailed from Kasan, a town in northern Fergana<br />
near present-day Chust.He left it for Tashkent, presumably in order to<br />
become a murid of Muhammad Qazi Burhan al-Din (d.1515), one of<br />
Khwaja Ubaydallah Ahrar’s khalifas.Becoming a pir and murshid himself,<br />
he gradually gained fame as a saintly person and author of many<br />
learned treatises.His renown reached Ubaydallah Khan, who showered<br />
favors and gifts on him, enabling him to build a khangah in Bukhara<br />
near his residence.The khwaja subsequently became a murshid of both<br />
Tajiks and Uzbeks – of such people as Muhammad Sultan Juybari<br />
(1481–1563) and Jani Beg Sultan for example.The former is important<br />
as the founder of the dynasty of Juybari shaykhs, Naqshbandi custodians<br />
of the shrine of Imam Abu Bakr Ahmad ibn Sad in the village of<br />
Sumitan just west of Bukhara; the latter as an Abulkhayrid Shaybanid<br />
whose branch, the Janibegids, gained primacy in the mid-sixteenth<br />
century and held it until the end of the Shaybanid period.As for Imam<br />
Abu Bakr, he was a tenth-century theologian described in a sixteenthcentury<br />
document as the person whose tomb was provided for by a waqf<br />
endowed by himself; the document also states that the waqf was established<br />
for the benefit of the imam’s male descendants, and implies that<br />
Khwaja Sad Juybari is at the moment in that position.Khwaja Sad (d.<br />
1589) was Muhammad Sultan Juybari’s son and successor, and with him<br />
began the prodigious growth of the Juybari shrine at Sumitan on the<br />
western outskirts of Bukhara.He enjoyed the gratitude and favors from<br />
the khan Abdallah II, a grandson of Jani Beg Sultan, who did not forget<br />
that his dynastic branch owed much to the Juybari shaykhs for its victory.<br />
The shrine, which came to be known as Char Bakr, grew into a complex
The Shaybanids 159<br />
that included a khangah, a mosque, a madrasa, and the endowments<br />
supporting it dramatically increased after the Janibegid victory in 1557.<br />
The Juybaris too increased their wealth by becoming involved in commerce,<br />
manufacturing, and agriculture, and sent their agents as far as<br />
Moscow on trade missions.On the third side of this special triangle,<br />
these Naqshbandi pirs and wealthy entrepreneurs came to occupy the<br />
post of shaykhulislam in Bukhara, an honor and function also attained, as<br />
we have seen, by the Ahrari pirs in Samarkand.What is more, this post,<br />
which in Central Asia tended to be hereditary, was held by the Juybaris<br />
through the nineteenth century.<br />
To return to Khwaja Kasani (Makhdum-i Azam), he spent the greater<br />
part of his life in the village of Dahpid or Dahbid just north of<br />
Samarkand, where his tomb became the nucleus of a shrine.His main<br />
importance lies in the Naqshbandi lodge and dynasty which this shaykh<br />
founded in Kashgar, however, although he himself never seems to have<br />
visited that region.Invited there by the Chaghatayid khan Abd al-<br />
Rashid Khan, Makhdum-i Azam sent instead two of his sons as deputies,<br />
a step that was the first act in the remarkable expansion of<br />
Naqshbandi presence in Sinkiang and China herself.That story will<br />
come up in our account of Sinkiang at this and subsequent periods.<br />
The Chaghatayid khans were by the sixteenth century solidly Muslim,<br />
as were their tribesmen themselves; they now had, however, to fight or<br />
absorb new arrivals, chiefly the Kalmyk and Kyrgyz nomads.We have<br />
already mentioned the Kalmyks’ first wave, which during the second half<br />
of the fifteenth century engulfed an area roughly corresponding to<br />
Moghulistan.It seems that about the same time, and possibly as allies,<br />
the Kyrgyz also made their appearance in this area.Unlike the Mongol<br />
Kalmyks, the Kyrgyz were Turks.We have described them as residents<br />
of southern Siberia around the upper Yenisei river who in the ninth<br />
century swept down into central Mongolia and destroyed the Uighur<br />
kingdom; most of the Kyrgyz stayed in their ancestral area, however,<br />
and that was where the Genghisid Mongols found them and incorporated<br />
them into their growing empire.There is little specific information<br />
as to how the Kyrgyz functioned subsequently, but it does seem that they<br />
participated both in the original expansion westward and in the campaigns<br />
waged by Genghis Khan’s successors, especially those of his<br />
great-grandson Qaydu (c.1262–1303).Many probably stayed in the<br />
mountainous part of western Moghulistan – modern Kyrgyzstan – from<br />
then on, although some may have temporarily moved back closer to<br />
their old homeland, fleeing from Timur during his campaigns of the
160 A history of Inner Asia<br />
1380s.Other Kyrgyz, however, had remained in their ancestral territories,<br />
and Kyrgyz chieftains played a role in the attempts of the Oirats to<br />
wrest Mongolia from the Genghisids in the first years of the fifteenth<br />
century.The Oirats, as we have seen, did not succeed there, and the<br />
thrust of their energies again swerved in the opposite, western direction;<br />
during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the Kyrgyz became their frequent<br />
targets.The majority of the Kalmyks, however, did not stay in<br />
western Moghulistan but changed their abode through a series of tribal<br />
and political movements that stretched from western Mongolia to southern<br />
Russia; meanwhile the Kyrgyz became receptive, in their new and<br />
definitive homeland, to the inspired proselytism of dervishes from<br />
Transoxania or to the forcible methods of the Chaghatayid khans themselves,<br />
and became Muslims, whereas the Kalmyks converted to<br />
Buddhism.<br />
The Chaghatayid khans, despite the dynasty’s charismatic lineage,<br />
saw their authority circumscribed by certain factors.One was the usual<br />
concept of family rule, perhaps overshadowed in their case by simple<br />
rivalries among the various scions; the geopolitical contrast between<br />
Moghulistan proper, Kashgaria (Altishahr), and Uighuristan (the area of<br />
Turfan) may also have had an effect.Another factor was the influence of<br />
some tribal leaders, especially those of the Dughlat clan, whose power<br />
at times surpassed that of the khans themselves.A third factor was the<br />
penetration of the Naqshbandi order of dervishes.Encouraged by the<br />
hospitality of Chaghatayid rulers, a number of them moved from<br />
Transoxania to Kashgaria; one of them, Khwaja Muhammad Yusuf, so<br />
impressed the pious Said Khan (1514–32) that the latter contemplated<br />
becoming a dervish himself; the Khwaja dissuaded him from doing so<br />
on the grounds that a temporal ruler should not abandon his duty of<br />
championing Islam with temporal means.The main impetus, however,<br />
came with the aforementioned Ahmad Khwajagi Kasani (Makhdum-i<br />
Azam), who indirectly set an example of this principle himself, for both<br />
the khangah which his emissaries founded at Kashgar and the sons<br />
whom he engendered by two wives became the foundation of two memorable<br />
dynasties in Kashgaria: those of the White Mountain (Aqtaghliq)<br />
and of the Black Mountain (Qarataghliq) Khwajas.These dervish aristocrats<br />
vied for an ever greater share of temporal power with the<br />
Chaghatayids, and in 1678 replaced them altogether as the rulers of the<br />
Altishahr portion of Sinkiang until their suppression by the Chinese in<br />
1759.<br />
From among the noteworthy Chaghatayid khans, the aforementioned
The Shaybanids 161<br />
Yunus Khan (ruled 1461–86), his grandson Mansur Khan (ruled 1502<br />
or 3–1543), the latter’s brother Said Khan (ruled 1514–32), and Said’s<br />
son Abd al-Rashid Khan (ruled 1532–70) stand out.The fact that the<br />
last three monarchs’ reigns overlap illustrates the concept of family rule,<br />
for Mansur Khan’s domain was Moghulistan proper and northern<br />
Altishahr with Aksu as the capital, whereas Said Khan ruled from<br />
Yarkand in the south.The most interesting personality in this society,<br />
however, is not a prince of the dynasty but a member of the Dughlat<br />
clan, Mir Haydar or Muhammad Haydar Mirza (1499–1551), who<br />
wrote the already quoted Tarikh-i Rashidi, a memorable account of the<br />
dynasty’s history and of the country under their rule.Mir Haydar was a<br />
younger contemporary and a cousin of Babur (his mother, the aforementioned<br />
Khub Nigar Khanim, was a younger sister of Babur’s<br />
mother Qutluq Nigar Khanim), and the analogy between their works<br />
immediately springs to one’s eyes.In contrast to the Baburname written in<br />
Turki, however, the Tarikh-i Rashidi was written in Persian.<br />
One of the bonds between the Shaybanids and the Chaghatayids was<br />
wariness of their immediate neighbors to the north, the Kazakhs of the<br />
eastern Dasht-i Kipchak.These were the territories of what is now<br />
central and southern Kazakhstan, where the formation of a distinct<br />
Kazakh nationality, triggered by the aforementioned and almost anecdotal<br />
defection of Janibeg and Girey, really took shape during the sixteenth<br />
century.Political structure in the Dasht-i Kipchak had become<br />
much looser than that bequeathed by the Mongol empire, and the most<br />
constant feature was the unceasing ebb and flow of alliances, conflicts<br />
and nomadic movements.The Genghisid ancestry of the Shaybanid<br />
line continued to play a role, but it failed to produce personalities strong<br />
enough to create a realm and nation that could play a major role.A new<br />
destiny for Inner Asia had indeed begun to dawn by the middle of the<br />
sixteenth century, and by the turn of the seventeenth its course was<br />
firmly set.
chapter twelve<br />
The rise of Russia, the fall of the Golden Horde, and the<br />
resilient Chaghatayids<br />
The rule of Husayn Bayqara (1469–1506) coincided for the most part<br />
with that of Ivan III (1462–1505), the knyaz or prince of Moscow (or<br />
Muscovy, to use the contemporary English name of the principality).If<br />
the Timurid’s reign shone with the sophistication of cultural life in<br />
Herat, the Muscovite’s stood out for different reasons: definitive emancipation<br />
from the “Tatar yoke” in 1480, and rapid unification of other<br />
principalities under that of Moscow.By the time Ivan III’s grandson,<br />
Ivan IV “the Terrible” (1530–84), ascended the throne in 1547,<br />
Muscovy had become Russia, a nascent empire ruled by an ever more<br />
powerful tsar.<br />
The rise of a unified Russia was mirrored, in reverse fashion, by the<br />
decline of her erstwhile Mongol suzerain.The Khanate of Kipchak, the<br />
“Golden Horde” of the Russians, had already been dealt a heavy blow<br />
when Timur devastated its capital city Saray and other economic centers<br />
in 1395, and it was in due course rent asunder by mutual rivalries that<br />
by 1466 produced four separate khanates: the “Great Horde,” a paltry<br />
remnant of the once mighty khanate, located to the west of the lower<br />
Volga; and the Khanates of Kazan, Astrakhan and the Crimea.In 1502<br />
the ruler of the last-named khanate, Mengli Girey, did Russia’s work at<br />
her adversary’s expense, for he destroyed what was left of the “Great<br />
Horde,” thus removing the one unit that might have attempted a reconstitution<br />
of the Golden Horde.<br />
The Mongol rulers and people of the three remaining khanates had<br />
by then adopted Islam and become Turkicized, and were carrying on<br />
lively relations with other Islamic countries, especially with Central Asia<br />
and the Ottoman empire.The Ottoman Turks in 1475 seized the southern<br />
fringe of the Crimea and subsequently extended their suzerainty<br />
over that khanate; and in the sixteenth century they made attempts to<br />
establish a cooperation, a kind of “common front,” with the Shaybanid<br />
Uzbeks.The new alliance was directed primarily against Shii Iran, but<br />
162
Russia, the Golden Horde, and the Chaghatayids 163<br />
for a brief period, under Sokollu Mehmet Pasha – grand vizier from<br />
1565 to 1579 – its target was also Russia.This far-sighted Ottoman<br />
statesman was rightly concerned: Ivan IV had in two vigorous campaigns<br />
destroyed the khanates of Kazan (1552) and Astrakhan (1556)<br />
and annexed their territories, an unprecedented reverse at a time when<br />
no obstacles to constant expansion of the Dar al-Islam led by the mighty<br />
Ottoman empire appeared possible; worse still, the conquests created<br />
almost overnight a new and powerful neighbor for the Ottoman and<br />
Central Asian Turks.Sokollu conceived the bold plan of digging a navigable<br />
canal from the Don to the Volga rivers and thus making it possible<br />
for Ottoman ships to reach the Caspian Sea.The project was<br />
attempted in 1569 in cooperation with the Crimean Tatars, but lack of<br />
enthusiasm both at the empire’s center and at the khan’s court stymied<br />
the work until it was abandoned with the approach of winter.Had it succeeded,<br />
the Turks might have been able to liberate Astrakhan; and had<br />
they subsequently adopted an expansive policy in competition with<br />
Muscovy for the still Turkic and sparsely populated Kipchak steppe<br />
instead of engaging in interminable and ruinous wars against the<br />
Habsburgs in the Balkans or Venice in the Mediterranean, their empire<br />
might have ultimately fared better.If Sokollu Mehmet feared Russia,<br />
however, few of his co-religionists shared his apprehension, and for some<br />
time to come her behavior seemed to prove them right.The Russians<br />
appeared contented with having reached the Volga estuary and the<br />
shores of the Caspian, but otherwise did not press their advantage<br />
farther south toward Ottoman or Shaybanid possessions; instead, their<br />
expansion took an eastward tack, beyond the Ural mountains into the<br />
vast expanse of Siberia.The only serious resistance, that of the Khanate<br />
of Sibir, which the Russians attacked for the first time in 1582, collapsed<br />
by 1600 with the death of its khan Küchüm.By 1649, the Russians<br />
reached the Pacific and anchored their presence there by constructing<br />
the fortification of Okhotsk; and a mere three years later they staked out<br />
their ownership of Siberia against possible Mongol or Chinese claims by<br />
erecting, in the continent’s geographical center, the fortress of Irkutsk.It<br />
was the most grandiose growth of a continental empire ever – with the<br />
notable exception of Genghis Khan’s; but fundamental structural<br />
differences separated the two, for the Mongol empire was little more<br />
than a frail artificial edifice, whereas the Russian empire was to become<br />
solid as a rock.<br />
Closer to home, Russia waited for another age before annexing the<br />
Crimea in 1783 and conquering Central Asia between 1865 and 1884;
164 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the latter conquest, however, began in the eighteenth century, if we<br />
include northern Kazakhstan in this area.Each step had its special characteristics<br />
and internal as well as external ramifications.The Siberian<br />
expansion appears at first sight to have been almost elemental, undertaken<br />
by the spontaneous dynamism of Cossacks and merchants.It was<br />
methodically propped up by strategic or logistical settlements, however;<br />
above all, Moscow just as relentlessly extended firm government control<br />
over the freshly acquired possessions, thus becoming a permanent neighbor<br />
of much of Inner Asia as conceived of in this study.<br />
Until directly attacked by Russia, however, the people of Inner Asia<br />
remained absorbed in their more immediate goals and conflicts.The<br />
Kazakh khans, despite witnessing the expansion of the infidel giant to<br />
the north and his absorption of the khanate of Sibir, had their sights<br />
turned chiefly southward toward the Syr Darya and Ili and the territories<br />
beyond these two rivers.Their khan Qasim (1511–23) was the first<br />
personality under whom the recently formed nationality acquired the<br />
more discernible structure of a khanate.From then on and for the rest<br />
of the sixteenth century, his successors would usually hold on to the<br />
northern bank of the Syr Darya and to such cities as Tashkent and<br />
Sayram, except for periods when the campaigns of the Shaybanid<br />
Abdallah II made them withdraw deeper into the Kazakh steppe.Haqq<br />
Nazar (1538–80), on the other hand, made significant inroads into<br />
Moghulistan, especially into the Issyk Kul area, where he and his<br />
Kazakhs struck up friendly relations with Muhammad, leader of the<br />
Kyrgyz.Qasim and Haqq Nazar could with some legitimacy claim to<br />
speak for all Kazakhs.From the seventeenth century until the Russian<br />
conquest in the nineteenth, howewer, these nomads only seldom and for<br />
brief periods recognized the authority of a single khan; usually they<br />
formed three separate tribal confederations or “Hordes,” thus called by<br />
the Russians (“Orda”) but known as “Jüz” (“Hundred”) in Kazakh: the<br />
Lesser Horde in western Kazakhstan, the Middle Horde in central<br />
Kazakhstan, and the Greater Horde in southeastern Kazakhstan (more<br />
or less coterminous with Semireche).This fragmentation could not but<br />
undermine their power to resist subsequent incursions by the Kalmyks<br />
and eventual conquest by the Russians.<br />
The Shaybanids had mostly peaceful relations with the Chaghatayids<br />
of Moghulistan and Kashgaria, but only after the latter had given up<br />
their ambitions in Fergana, an area claimed by most rulers of<br />
Transoxania; this rivalry caused an initial conflict between the two
Russia, the Golden Horde, and the Chaghatayids 165<br />
dynasties, which ended in 1508 with the capture and execution of<br />
Mahmud, the khan of Altishahr (Kashgaria), by Muhammad Shaybani.<br />
Mahmud’s elder brother, Ahmad, the khan of Moghulistan, had meanwhile<br />
died in 1503, and it was his two sons, the aforementioned Mansur<br />
and Said, who would propel the dynasty to a relatively successful reign<br />
in Sinkiang for several more generations.Mansur Khan (1503–43), a<br />
devout Muslim, spent his chief efforts on a jihad eastward into the grey<br />
zone of lingering Buddhism and Mongol and Chinese claims, as for<br />
example were the oasis towns of Hami (Qomul) and Tunhuang.He also<br />
endeavored, on the home front, to quicken the conversion of those of<br />
his subjects who still remained alien to Islam, chiefly the Kyrgyz.Said<br />
Khan (1514–32) meanwhile directed his efforts southward toward<br />
Ladakh; he was assisted in this by Muhammad Haydar Mirza, the aforementioned<br />
Dughlat emir and historian who subsequently also served<br />
Said’s successor Abd al-Rashid (1532–70).A break soon occurred<br />
between the latter two, however, and resulted in Haydar Mirza’s retreat<br />
to India in 1541, where he entered the service of Babur’s son Humayun<br />
and was given the task of governing the province of Kashmir.<br />
Abd al-Rashid became preoccupied with events in northwestern<br />
Moghulistan, the area of the Tianshan mountains around lake Issyk Kul<br />
and the lower Ili region.It was thither that the Kazakh khan Haqq<br />
Nazar, as we have mentioned, directed the thrust of his campaigns.<br />
Haqq Nazar was unopposed by Mansur Khan’s successor Shah Khan<br />
(1545–70), who was too preoccupied with his brother Muhammad’s<br />
rebellion farther east.The latter complication illustrates the weakness of<br />
this diminished resurrection of the Chaghatayid principality, its breakup<br />
among family members who seldom displayed a concord of the kind<br />
that had produced a minor “Chaghatayid renaissance” under Mansur<br />
Khan and Said Khan.Moreover, their successors gradually lost control<br />
of northern Moghulistan, an area increasingly overrun by Kazakhs and<br />
Kalmyks, so that only Sinkiang proper – Kasgharia and Uighuristan –<br />
remained their principal possession.There their rule tended to split up<br />
into three segments whose urban centers were usually: (1) Aksu, the<br />
northwestern fringe of the area and, although reckoned as one of the<br />
cities of Altishahr, also viewed as part of Moghulistan; (2) Kashgar or<br />
Yarqand (Altishahr); and (3) Turfan (Uighuristan).Kashgar, which like<br />
Turfan enjoyed a special status for a variety of reasons – as an ancient<br />
intersection on the Silk Road and gateway to Transoxania, as a timehonored<br />
capital of regional kingdoms, and as the residence of venerated
166 A history of Inner Asia<br />
religious personalites with their tombs nearby – was an ancient city with<br />
a recurrent political role.It was thither that in the 1530s the aforementioned<br />
Makhdum-i Azam sent from Bukhara his emissaries who founded<br />
a dervish lodge and a dynasty of religious leaders who would in due<br />
course usurp temporal power from the Chaghatayids themselves.
chapter thirteen<br />
The Buddhist Mongols<br />
Toghon Temür, the last Yüan emperor of China and a Genghisid of the<br />
Toluy-Qubilay line, fled in 1368 to Mongolia after the dynasty’s defeat<br />
and replacement by the national Ming Dynasty.From then on, his<br />
descendants and those of other Genghisid lineages would claim the right<br />
to rule the Mongols, but without achieving the re-establishment of even<br />
a unified Mongolia, to say nothing of a resurrection of the Genghisid<br />
empire.The challenge of reconquering the northern and western portions<br />
of Mongolia itself, with the historic region of Qaraqorum, from<br />
their linguistic cousins the Oirats proved an arduous and protracted task.<br />
The able and energetic Dayan Khan (enthroned in 1470, ruled from<br />
1481) failed to do so despite the campaigns he waged from 1492 on, and<br />
success was granted only to his equally remarkable grandson Altan<br />
Khan (1543–83) and the latter’s great-nephew Khutukhtai Sechen<br />
Khungtaiji, chief of the Ordos tribes (1540–86).Their victory over the<br />
Oirats in 1552 was to benefit especially the Khalkha component of the<br />
Eastern Mongols, who occupied these central and northwestern segments<br />
of the country that eventually became the core of modern<br />
Mongolia.For the time being, however, the center of political power<br />
among Eastern Mongols was in territories corresponding to what is now<br />
Inner Mongolia, more specifically areas inhabited by the tribes of<br />
Tümet and Ordos.Meanwhile the Oirats retreated west after their<br />
defeat to join their kinsmen in the Eurasian steppes, a move that would<br />
contribute to the creation of the Jungar khanate in Sinkiang and the<br />
Kalmyk khanate in southern Russia.<br />
While ruling China as the Yüan Dynasty, Qubilay and his successors<br />
began to abandon their people’s ancestral shamanism, which was<br />
marked by religious indifference or tolerance, and to display a growing<br />
interest in Buddhism.They – especially Qubilay – seemed to favor this<br />
religion over others.The massive conversion of the Mongols to<br />
Buddhism happened only after the dynasty’s return to Mongolia,<br />
167
168 A history of Inner Asia<br />
however.The conversion of Altan Khan set in motion a rapid adoption<br />
of Buddhism by most Eastern Mongols; moreover, in the following<br />
century Buddhism gained a similar success among the Oirats, and eventually<br />
also among the Buriats of southern Siberia.In all three cases the<br />
form adopted was the Tibetan denomination of the Yellow Hat, better<br />
known as Lamaism – and more correctly, in scholarly terminology, given<br />
its Tibetan name Gelugpa.It was famous for its extreme monasticism,<br />
theocracy eventually symbolized by the person of the Dalai Lama reigning<br />
from Lhassa, and a complex system of reincarnations.This also<br />
meant a lasting and mutually supportive relationship between the<br />
Mongol and Tibetan churches, which began in 1578 when Sonam-<br />
Gyatso (or bSod-nams rgya-mts’o, if we follow the generally accepted<br />
scholarly transliteration), chief of the Tibetan church, came to<br />
Mongolia to organize the new junior branch.It was at that point that<br />
the title Dalai Lama appeared for the first time – a Mongolian–Tibetan<br />
hybrid with the connotation of “Universal Lama” – apparently<br />
bestowed upon the Tibetan prelate by Altan Khan and from then on<br />
assumed by the spiritual and temporal chief of the Tibetan church.<br />
Sonam-Gyatso then returned to Tibet, but not without leaving in<br />
Mongolia a substitute of sorts, a “Living Buddha” who then resided at<br />
the aforementioend Köke-khoto or Huehot, a city in Inner Mongolia<br />
near the northeastern bend of the Yellow River and now the capital of<br />
China’s Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region.<br />
The effect of this conversion, especially on the Eastern Mongols, was<br />
profound, pervasive, and persistent, lasting until the establishment of<br />
Communist rule in 1921.It affected the Mongols’ political, social, and<br />
economic structure, cultural life, and demography.Demographically, it<br />
ended up draining some 40 percent of the male population into the<br />
country’s numerous lamaseries, with a nearly suicidal effect on the population.It<br />
is indeed an irony of Mongol history: a nation that paid a<br />
heavy demographic price for its dazzling military empire in the Middle<br />
Ages, and then again for its total abandonment to a quietist religion in<br />
the modern era.<br />
The social structure of the Mongols meant that their conversion proceeded<br />
along tribal lines, the Tümet and Ordos of the southern territories<br />
– what is now Inner Mongolia – under Altan Khan preceding those<br />
of the north by a few years.The conversion of Tümen-Sasakhtu<br />
(1557–93), another descendant of Dayan Khan and chief of the<br />
Chakhar tribes, deserves attention for the fact that it was this khan who<br />
initiated the promulgation of a new Mongol law code based on
The Buddhist Mongols 169<br />
Buddhism.Most important in the long run, however, was the conversion<br />
of the Khalkha in 1588, for it was among them that the incarnation of<br />
the new Dalai Lama was identified among the descendants of Dayan<br />
Khan; the newborn child stayed at Urga, the nomads’ initially peripatetic<br />
headquarters, until the age of thirteen; then the youth was solemnly<br />
installed in Lhassa as the fourth Dalai Lama.Meanwhile another<br />
“Living Buddha,” Maidari Khutukhtu, was installed at Urga as the<br />
Jebtsun-damba-khutukhtu, head of the sect among the Khalkha.His<br />
spiritual descendants eventually also became temporal rulers, like their<br />
senior peers the Dalai Lamas, and their authority embraced all of<br />
Mongolia until the replacement of the theocracy by the republic in 1924<br />
(not 1921; the apparent contradiction will be explained below).<br />
Conversion to Buddhism also occurred, as we have said, among the<br />
Oirats, but not until the seventeenth century, after the major part of their<br />
tribes had migrated to Jungaria and points farther west.Curiously,<br />
embracing this quietist religion did not immediately produce a radical<br />
transformation of their society to the degree that it did among the<br />
Eastern Mongols.Quite to the contrary: the expansiveness of the vigorous<br />
Jungar state in Sinkiang, and the campaigns of the Kalmyks through<br />
the Dasht-i Kipchak, occurred concurrently with or just after their conversion<br />
to Buddhism early in the seventeenth century.<br />
We have already mentioned the first wave of Oirat (Kalmyk) expansion<br />
westward into the Dasht-i Kipchak, more specifically the area of<br />
southernmost Kazakhstan, in the second half of the fifteenth century.<br />
The Oirats then withdrew to territories closer to their original homeland<br />
in southern Siberia, and in the process occupied western Mongolia until<br />
they were thrown back, as we have said, by Altan Khan in 1552.This<br />
repulsion incited some of the turbulent tribes to undertake the second<br />
wave of raids into the aforementioned parts of Kazakhstan, but without<br />
attempting any real conquests; instead, the majority concentrated in<br />
Jungaria.<br />
The most prominent tribes among them were the Choro, Dörböt,<br />
Torghut, and Khoshot, but it was the epithet “Jungar” (also spelled<br />
Dzungar or Zungar) by which they and their new territory, Jungaria,<br />
became known.This special ethnonym (the literal meaning of zungar is<br />
“left hand,” as opposed to barungar, “right hand”; it appeared at an illdefined<br />
moment when they were identified with their position within a<br />
larger tribal confederation) has survived the people themselves in the<br />
name of Jungaria.It was there that the Oirats embraced Buddhism,<br />
about a generation after their cousins the Eastern Mongols had done so.
170 A history of Inner Asia<br />
The process, consummated by 1620, was similar: tribal leaders such as<br />
Boibeghus-baatur of the Khoshot, Khara-kulla of the Choros, Dalaitaiji<br />
of the Dörböt, and Khu-Urluq of the Torghut converted, and their<br />
tribes followed suit.The conversion was followed, whether coincidentally<br />
or through a causal relationship, by several developments of historical<br />
importance and ultimately tragic consequences.<br />
Those Oirats who stayed in Jungaria, led by the Choros under their<br />
khan Baatur-Khongtaiji (1634–53), consolidated their hold on the area,<br />
symbolizing this by stabilizing their headquarters in the form of a city<br />
which became the modern Chuguchak (Tacheng).Baatur-Khongtaiji<br />
also sent one of his sons, Galdan, to Lhassa as a novice in a lamasery.<br />
Galdan, however, eventually received a dispensation to break his vows<br />
and return to Jungaria in order to join the succession struggle that had<br />
flared up among his brothers after their father’s death.By 1676 he<br />
emerged as the victor, inaugurating his own reign (1676–97).It was he<br />
who transformed the small khanate into the relatively short-lived but<br />
memorable Jungar empire of Sinkiang, which lasted until its destruction<br />
by the Chinese in 1758.He founded it in two stages: the first was the<br />
unification of all the Oirat tribes of Jungaria under his rule; and the<br />
second was the extension of his suzerainty over the entire Sinkiang.The<br />
fact that Galdan subsequently directed his main and ultimately unsuccessful<br />
efforts toward Mongolia and China underscores the almost accidental<br />
and anomalous nature of the second step; for it was provoked by<br />
the aforementioned quarrel between a descendant of Genghis Khan<br />
and a descendant of the Prophet Muhammad: the Chaghatayid Ismail<br />
made an effort to recover some of the power which the Khwajas, in particular<br />
Hazrat Apak of Kashgar, had usurped in Altishahr from the<br />
Genghisids.The Khwaja fled to Tibet where he found refuge with the<br />
Dalai Lama, who instructed Galdan Khan to restore the dervish to his<br />
former position.The Oirat khan occupied Kashgar, sent Ismail a prisoner<br />
to Kulja, and in 1678 re-established Hazrat Apak in his former<br />
position but as his vassal.The irony of these events is striking: the Dalai<br />
Lama, a Buddhist incarnation, is asked by a descendant of the Prophet<br />
of Islam to restore him to his position of prestige and power, and the<br />
latter is reinstalled by an infidel khan.<br />
Galdan Khan’s main ambition lay, however, farther east.After consolidating<br />
his hold on Sinkiang by taking Turfan and Hami in 1681, he<br />
repulsed in 1688 an attack by Tsaghun-Dorji, one of the five Khalkha<br />
chieftains of Mongolia, and then himself invaded their territory.The<br />
Khalkha retreated to Tümet territory in Inner Mongolia, requesting
The Buddhist Mongols 171<br />
Chinese protection.The emperor Kang-hsi (r.1661–1722) set out to<br />
counter Galdan’s advance, and in 1690 the two armies clashed between<br />
Urga and Kalgan, some 300 kilometers north of Beijing.The Chinese<br />
won, partly thanks to the cannon made for them by Jesuit missionaries.<br />
Galdan withdrew from Mongolia and the Khalkha princes returned to<br />
their dominions.The next year, 1691, at Dolon Nor – a town some 250<br />
kilometers north of Beijing in the southeastern corner of Inner<br />
Mongolia – the Manchu emperor received their homage as his vassals.<br />
This act officially established Manchu suzerainty over the eastern<br />
Mongols living in Mongolia proper.<br />
The tribes living in what would evolve into Inner Mongolia had been<br />
annexed since the rise of the Manchus as early as 1644.For Inner<br />
Mongolia, incorporation in the Chinese empire proved a permanent<br />
arrangement, on both the political and demographic levels: politically, it<br />
outlasted the Manchu Dynasty beyond its demise in 1911 and exists<br />
today as the Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region of the People’s<br />
Republic of China; demographically, the Mongol population has been<br />
swamped by Chinese settlers.In Outer Mongolia too, Chinese suzerainty<br />
lasted until the twentieth century – until 1911 or later dates<br />
depending on interpretation, the latest terminus being 1945 – but without<br />
the demographic transformation that befell Inner Mongolia.<br />
Galdan Khan, after a second and equally unsuccessful attempt against<br />
China in 1696, withdrew his forces and died a year later.This time the<br />
Manchu emperor pursued the Oirats all the way to Hami, which he<br />
occupied as a foretaste of the offensive that half a century later would<br />
lead to the fall of the Jungar empire and the establishment of Sinkiang<br />
as a Chinese possession.Galdan was succeeded by his nephew Tsevang<br />
Rabdan (1697–1727); like his predecessor, the new khan clashed several<br />
times with Kang-hsi, but there was a significant difference: it was the<br />
Manchu emperor who took the offensive and attacked the Mongol.The<br />
first important conflict that had long-lasting effects was their fight over<br />
the control of Tibet, where internal convulsions led to the installment of<br />
a Chinese-supported Dalai Lama in 1710.This provoked Oirat intervention.The<br />
troops sent by Tsevang Rabdan occupied Lhassa in 1717<br />
and achieved an initial success against a Chinese army, but were then<br />
defeated by a second Manchu expeditionary force, which in 1720<br />
enthroned a new Dalai Lama and set up Tibet as China’s protectorate<br />
with two imperial residents to supervise the Buddhist theocrat’s rule.<br />
This event came close to being paralleled in Sinkiang itself, where<br />
another confrontation between the Oirats and the Manchus was taking
172 A history of Inner Asia<br />
place.It was provoked by Tsevang Rabdan’s attempt of 1715 to reoccupy<br />
Hami, and led to the arrival of a Chinese expeditionary force that<br />
by 1720 penetrated into the heart of Jungaria and defeated the Oirats<br />
near Urumchi.The death of emperor Kang-hsi and accession of the relatively<br />
pacific Yung-cheng (1722–35), who granted the Oirat khan a<br />
peace treaty in 1724, contributed to the postponement of the impending<br />
annexation.<br />
Unlike Galdan Khan, Tsevang Rabdan does not appear to have<br />
entertained hopes of building an empire at the expense of China, and<br />
his conflicts with Kang-hsi were chiefly defensive.On the other hand, he<br />
pursued an expansive policy westward into what had once been<br />
Moghulistan and the Dasht-i Kipchak, but was changing into what is<br />
now Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan.The Kyrgyz, whom the Oirats called<br />
Buruts, came under their rule; they had by then become Muslims,<br />
although their conversion may still have been quite superficial and<br />
replete with shamanistic beliefs.On the Kazakh front, Kalmyk incursions<br />
produced confrontations such as the defeat of Tauke (1680–1718),<br />
khan of the Middle Horde, in 1698, and of his successor Pulad<br />
(1718–30), in 1723.The latter defeat especially caused untold misery<br />
among the Kazakh masses and was remembered as Aqtaban shubyryndy,<br />
“The Great Calamity.”<br />
In 1727, when Tsevang Rabdan died and his son Galdan Tsereng<br />
(1727–45) ascended the throne, the relations between the Jungars, the<br />
Khalkha, and the Chinese appeared to have stabilized.The Chinese<br />
held easternmost Sinkiang or parts of historic Uighuristan as far as<br />
Turfan; the Khalkha were firmly established in central and eastern<br />
Mongolia with Urga as their headquarters; and the Jungars controlled,<br />
besides most of Sinkiang, westernmost Mongolia with such places as<br />
Kobdo and Uliassutai.Galdan Tsereng, however, provoked a conflict<br />
with both the Manchu emperor and his vassals the Khalkha.The<br />
Chinese and their clients began to gain an edge in the seesaw struggle,<br />
but in 1735 Yung-cheng granted Galdan Tsereng a peace treaty that was<br />
confirmed by his successor, emperor Chien-lung (1735–95), in 1740.It<br />
was the lack of internal stability that ultimately doomed the Jungars.<br />
Troubles began with Galdan’s son and successor Tsevang-dorji-namgyal<br />
(1745–50), and intensified after his fall with the ensuing struggle for succession.One<br />
of the contenders, Amursana, failing to overcome his<br />
rivals, fled to China, where in 1755 he declared his readiness to accept<br />
Manchu suzerainty.A Chinese army under General Pan-ti defeated<br />
Davaji, the reigning khan, and occupied Kulja with the intention of car-
The Buddhist Mongols 173<br />
rying out the proposed reorganization of Jungaria with Amursana as a<br />
Manchu vassal.When the latter tried to renege on his commitment, Panti<br />
seized him and sent him to Beijing, but the Oirat chieftain escaped and<br />
managed to organize an uprising against the Chinese force.Pan-ti committed<br />
suicide, but Amursana’s triumph was short-lived: the Manchu<br />
general Chao-hui came with another army and by 1757 crushed all<br />
resistance.Amursana fled to Siberia, where he died soon afterwards.<br />
Meanwhile Chao-hui with his Manchu troops had decimated the Oirat<br />
tribes living in Jungaria to the point where the area, annexed as a crown<br />
possession of the Manchu dynasty (1758) but almost depopulated,<br />
needed recolonization.The Manchus proceeded to repopulate the province<br />
with various elements, but excluding the ethnic Chinese; eventually<br />
these elements included also those Torghut Kalmyks who had left their<br />
khanate on the lower Volga in 1771.<br />
While Jungaria was being agitated by the upheavals that led to the<br />
extermination of its Oirat population, Kashgaria continued to be ruled<br />
by four sons of the Qarataghliq Khwaja Daniyal: Yusuf at Kashgar,<br />
Jagan at Yarkand, Ayyub at Aksu, and Abdallah at Khotan.Led by the<br />
energetic Yusuf, they exploited the disorders agitating their infidel suzerains<br />
by declaring full independence in 1753.Two years later Amursana,<br />
who had just returned with Chinese troops to Jungaria, arranged for a<br />
small force of Chinese to expel the rebellious Qarataghliq Khwajas and<br />
install, as vassals in their stead, their rivals the Aqtaghliq Khwajas<br />
Burhan al-din (the Great Khwaja) and his brother Khwaja Jan (the Little<br />
Khwaja), who had since 1720 languished in semi-captivity at Kulja.The<br />
project succeeded, but as soon as Amursana and the Chinese began to<br />
quarrel, the two Aqtaghliq Khwajas proclaimed themselves independent<br />
and even defeated the small force sent against them by the Chinese<br />
in 1757.The next year, however, more troops came and besieged<br />
Burhan al-Din at Kashgar and Khwaja Jan at Yarkand.The cities were<br />
taken in 1759, and both Khwajas fled to Badakhshan, where the local<br />
Muslim ruler yielded to Chinese pressure and had them executed.<br />
Kashgaria, like Jungaria, became a Manchu possession as part of the<br />
crown’s Sinkiang province.<br />
Among the Oirats of Jungaria it was the Khoshot, as we have said,<br />
who dominated the scene since their khan Khara-khula (d.1634) and his<br />
son Baatur-Khongtaiji (1634–53) had consolidated Oirat control of the<br />
area.The first expansion of the Jungars was directed against their neighbors<br />
to the west, the Kazakhs of the Greater Horde.In two memorable<br />
campaigns, Baatur defeated the khan Ishim in 1635, and then his son
174 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Jahangir in 1643.Subsequently the aforementioned Galdan Khan<br />
became too involved with Sinkiang, Tibet, Mongolia, and China to<br />
repeat Baatur’s exploits against the Kazakhs, but this was made up for<br />
by Galdan’s successor Tsevang Rabdan, whose reign coincided with that<br />
of the Kazakh khan Tauke.The latter stands out in Kazakh history as<br />
a powerful leader and one of the few khans whose rule extended over<br />
the three hordes; in 1694 he received a Russian embassy, and Oirat<br />
envoys came to him four years later.Tauke, however, had the latter executed,<br />
an act that provoked Tsevang’s swift retaliation, for he attacked<br />
and defeated him in the same year.<br />
The main Oirat blow, however, fell on Tauke’s successor Pulat Khan<br />
(1718–30) in 1723 (the aforementioned Aqtaban shubyryndy).The Oirats<br />
raided Kazakh territory all the way to the right bank of the Syr Darya,<br />
sacking the cities of Sayram, Tashkent, and Turkestan.This raid displays<br />
an eerie resemblance to those of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries,<br />
in which the Oirats – better remembered in that context as Kalmyks<br />
– sacked the same area, and at first sight there is even another kind of<br />
parallel: the earliest raid sapped the might and prestige of the Uzbeks,<br />
especially of Abulkhayr Khan; the later ones did the same to the<br />
Kazakhs.There was one important difference, however.Whereas<br />
earlier, once the Oirats had pulled back, the Uzbeks and Kazakhs<br />
regained their strength, the defeat in the eighteenth century happened<br />
at the very time when the Russian empire, having absorbed all of<br />
Siberia, was beginning its relentless push southward into Kazakhstan<br />
and Central Asia.The calamities caused by this third and last wave of<br />
western Mongol invasions should have ended with the destruction of the<br />
Jungars by the Manchus, but by then the Kazakhs had become too dislocated<br />
and weakened to attempt effective unified resistance to the incipient<br />
Russian expansion.<br />
The Kazakhs of the Greater and Middle Hordes were not the only<br />
ones afflicted by the Oirat invasions.There was too much rivalry<br />
between the Khoshot and Torghut tribes for both to share Jungaria; so<br />
in 1616, at about the time the Khoshot were consolidating their Jungar<br />
realm, the Torghut under Khu-Urluq abandoned that area and<br />
migrated farther west to the territories of the Lesser Horde, thus roughly<br />
between the rivers Emba and Volga.In 1643 the khan of the Torghut<br />
established his headquarters near the Volga estuary, and the Kalmyks –<br />
as these Oirats became known not only to the Muslim Turks but also to<br />
the Russians – straddling that river’s lower course and nomadizing in the<br />
steppes from the lower Volga all the way to the estuary of the Emba
The Buddhist Mongols 175<br />
along the northern rim of the Caspian, became the principal nomadic<br />
power in the area.They remained so until 1771, when a substantial part<br />
of them carried out the same migration but in reverse, back to the Ili<br />
basin and Jungaria.The story of this Kalmyk khanate is an unusual and<br />
poignant historical episode.Its formation created a special cultural<br />
dichotomy and a religious trichotomy: in an area populated chiefly by<br />
Nogays who were Muslim Turkic nomads, a new Buddhist Mongol<br />
nomadic element made its tempestuous entry and quickly dominated<br />
them, but had to find a modus vivendi with Orthodox Russia, which was<br />
emphatically displaying its power through the presence of the tsar’s governor<br />
at Astrakhan.The Kalmyks, like their Jungar cousins, remained a<br />
turbulent element engaged in predatory campaigns throughout much of<br />
their khanate’s existence, but the targets of these raids were chiefly their<br />
Turkic neighbors to the southeast, in particular the Turkmens of<br />
Mangishlak and the Khanate of Khiva.In contrast, their relations with<br />
Russia not only remained amicable, but the khans did not shrink from<br />
acknowledging themselves as the tsar’s vassals.This relationship was<br />
especially striking during the long reign of the khan Ayuka (1670–1724),<br />
who in 1673 came to pay his homage to the governor at Astrakhan, and<br />
whom half a century later, in 1722, Peter the Great received with great<br />
pomp at Saratov.In the following decades, however, Russia’s suzerainty<br />
became increasingly onerous, until in January 1771 over 11,000 tents or<br />
150,000 people – about two-thirds of the total Kalmyk population of<br />
the khanate – set out on a return migration to Jungaria.By the time they<br />
reached the recently established Chinese possession in the fall of that<br />
year, the Kalmyks had suffered horrendous losses – perhaps as many as<br />
two-thirds again had perished – caused by severe weather conditions and<br />
attacks by hostile Kazakhs as well as by Russian troops.Jungaria had just<br />
been conquered by Manchu troops who then decimated its Jungar population,<br />
so that the Chinese government welcomed the arrival of the<br />
latter’s Kalmyk relatives in the depopulated province.The empress<br />
Catherine the Great, who considered the Kalmyks her subjects, in vain<br />
pressured the Ching (Manchu) government to return them to Russian<br />
territory.<br />
The Kalmyks who participated in this reverse migration had all lived<br />
to the east of the Volga.Those who at that point lived to the west of the<br />
river stayed, and became the nucleus of the Kalmyk nation that after the<br />
formation of the Soviet Union received the status of an Autonomous<br />
Republic within the Russian Federation.
Horde of Bükey<br />
(nomadic Kazakhs)<br />
Middle Horde<br />
(nomadic Kazakhs)<br />
Greater Horde<br />
(nomadic Kazakhs)<br />
Lesser Horde<br />
(nomadic Kazakhs)<br />
L.<br />
Balkash<br />
Aral<br />
Sea<br />
Issyk-kul<br />
Syr Darya<br />
KHANATE<br />
<strong>OF</strong><br />
KHOQAND<br />
KHANATE <strong>OF</strong><br />
KHIVA<br />
Khiva<br />
SINKIANG<br />
Kashgar<br />
Khoqand<br />
EMIRATE<br />
Bukhara <strong>OF</strong><br />
BUKHARA<br />
Amu Darya<br />
Nomadic<br />
Turkmen tribes<br />
C a s p i a n S e a<br />
(CHINESE<br />
TURKESTAN)<br />
Ashkhabad<br />
A F G H A N I S T A N<br />
Meshed<br />
Central Asia<br />
(ca. 1825)<br />
I R A N<br />
Map 5 Central Asia, ca.1825
chapter fourteen<br />
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand in the seventeenth to<br />
nineteenth centuries<br />
bukhara<br />
When Abdallah II died in 1598, his son and successor Abdalmumin,<br />
who had spent a number of years as governor of Balkh, managed to stay<br />
on the throne only a few months before he was ousted and killed in the<br />
disorders that followed his father’s death.No other adult male son of<br />
Abdallah II had survived to take over – a curious feature in a system<br />
where a plethora of sons and grandsons born of a ruler’s several wives<br />
was often the problem; it seems that in this case Abdallah II, perhaps<br />
inspired by the example of his allies the Ottomans but applying his own<br />
modified version, had suppressed all the male contenders for succession<br />
except Abdalmumin.<br />
What Abdallah did not do, however, was to eliminate his brother-inlaw<br />
Jani Muhammad, whose father Yar Muhammad had taken refuge<br />
with the Shaybanids of Bukhara after the conquest of the khanate of<br />
Astrakhan by the Russians in 1556.Jani Muhammad married the Uzbek<br />
khan’s sister, and he acceded to the vacated throne in Bukhara as the first<br />
ruler of a dynasty called Janid or Ashtarkhanid; the Janids too were<br />
Juchids, but not through Shiban but through Tuqay Timur, one of<br />
Juchi’s other sons (in fact, his thirteenth son), so that some historians<br />
prefer the name “Tuqay-Timurids” to the genealogically less revealing<br />
appellations Janids or Ashtarkhanids.Under their rule the city and<br />
khanate crystallized into an almost classical pattern of a Muslim polity<br />
of its time, cherishing and even enhancing traditional values while<br />
ignoring or rejecting the vertiginous changes initiated by the Europeans<br />
but now reaching other parts of the world.Most khans, especially the<br />
virtuous Abdalaziz (ruled 1645–81), were devout Muslims who favored<br />
the religious establishment and adorned Bukhara with still more<br />
mosques and madrasas.Samarkand was not neglected either, but the<br />
center of political and religious activities had definitively shifted to<br />
177
178 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Bukhara, so much so that the outside world came to think of Central<br />
Asia as Bukhara; to the Russians, Central Asian merchants who began<br />
to frequent their empire were known as “Bukharans,” and even Sinkiang<br />
received the nickname of “Little Bukhara.” On the religious level, its<br />
madrasas – the Mir-i Arab madrasa being the most famous one – gave<br />
the city the reputation of one of Islam’s foremost centers of learning and<br />
orthodoxy, while its Sufi shaykhs and dervishes – here the aforementioned<br />
shrines of Baha al-Din Naqshband in Qasr-i Arifan and of Abu<br />
Bakr in Sumitan led the roster – added their dimension of wide appeal<br />
and participation by the masses.The Janid capital thus became famous<br />
as Bukhara-i Sharif, the Noble Bukhara, both as a center of learning of<br />
Sunni Islam and as a place where dervishes inspired the populace with<br />
their kind of worship and their way of life.<br />
We have seen that the cultural florescence characteristic of Timurid<br />
Herat and Samarkand continued in Shaybanid Bukhara, Samarkand,<br />
and Balkh to such a degree that we can speak of a silver age of the same<br />
cultural tradition.A similar statement can be made with respect to seventeenth-century<br />
Janid Bukhara, and, in a special sense, also to Khiva.<br />
Architecture, literary culture, and the book arts continued, although at<br />
a lower level of refinement than those of the preceding centuries and<br />
dynasties.One example is a history which Mahmud ibn Vali, a member<br />
of the Uzbek aristocracy, began to write in 1634 and which he called<br />
Bahr al-Asrar fi Manaqib al-Akhyar (“Ocean of Secrets about the Legends<br />
of the Best Ones”); it was commissioned at Balkh by the future khan<br />
Nadhr Muhammad (1641–45).This compendium is in line with the<br />
historiographic school that began with Rashid al-Din in Mongol Iran<br />
and flowered under the Timurids with such works as Hafiz Abru’s<br />
Zafername and Sharaf al-Din Yazdi’s book of the same title, or again with<br />
several biographies of Shaybanid khans such as the aforementioned<br />
Sharafname-i Shahi, a history of the rule of Abdallah II by Hafiz Tanish<br />
Bukhari.Belletristic and musical culture is documented by tezkere books<br />
(biographical dictionaries) compiled by Qadi Badi-i Samarqandi and<br />
Mir Muhammad Amin-i Bukhari.Of architectural monuments, the<br />
most remarkable ones were erected in Samarkand due to the patronage<br />
of the governor Alchin Yalantush Bek, who ordered the construction of<br />
two beautiful madrasas on that city’s rigistan or main square; the first,<br />
completed in 1618, is called Shirdar (“With Lions,” so named after two<br />
zodiacal lions painted on the spandrels of the main portal), and was built<br />
by a famous architect, Abdaljabbar Naqqash.The other, the Tilakar
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 179<br />
madrasa (“Madrasa with gold facing”), completed in 1630, is also situated<br />
on the rigistan; the three buildings – Ulugh Beg and Shirdar facing<br />
each other, Tilakar delimiting the third side of the square – form an<br />
exquisite composition and one of the justly famous examples of Central<br />
Asian architecture and urban planning.<br />
Abdalaziz Khan is also remembered for valiant efforts to bring Balkh,<br />
traditionally the heir presumptive’s appanage, under closer control, and<br />
for favoring the religious and scholarly class; both the khwajas of the<br />
Naqshbandi and other dervish orders, and the alims, secular Islamic<br />
scholars, benefited from his patronage.Nevertheless, he could not<br />
prevent frequent raids by the Khivans which reached their climax under<br />
Anusha Khan; the raid of 1681, which resulted in a temporary seizure<br />
of Bukhara, broke the aging monarch’s spirit and made him abdicate<br />
the throne.<br />
Abdalaziz Khan was in 1681 succeeded by his brother Subhanquli<br />
Khan (1681–1702), and the latter by his (Subhanquli’s) sons Ubaydallah<br />
Khan (1702–11; not to be confused with his Shaybanid namesake) and<br />
Abulfayz Khan (1711–47).The crisis that had led to the abdication of<br />
Abdalaziz reinforced the growing independence of Uzbek tribal leaders<br />
and precipitated the decline of the Janids, which was consummated with<br />
the murder of Abulfayz Khan in 1747 by the Manghit emir Muhammad<br />
Rahim Bi, the ataliq or major-domo of the dynasty.The decline manifested<br />
itself in the de facto rule of this family of tribal emirs, initially as<br />
ataliqs, and from 1785 officially as the last dynasty to rule Bukhara<br />
(1785–1920).The first Manghit ataliq was Khudayar Bi, who occupied<br />
this position from 1714 until he died in 1722.His son Muhammad<br />
Hakim Bi succeeded him in this post and reinforced his authority despite<br />
a traumatic spell of disorders visited upon Bukhara, which included a<br />
seven-year-long series of raids by nomadic Kazakhs, themselves refugees<br />
from the aforementioned invasions of the Dasht-i Kipchak by the Oirats<br />
of Jungaria.A mere decade after the withdrawal of the Kazakhs,<br />
Transoxania was invaded by the Persians: in 1740 Nadir Shah, the new<br />
ruler of Iran, crossed the Amu Darya and, accepting the submission of<br />
Muhammad Hakim Bi which was then formalized by the acquiescence<br />
of Abulfayz Khan himself, proceeded to attack Khiva.When rebellions<br />
broke out in 1743 upon the death of Muhammad Hakim, the shah dispatched<br />
the ataliq’s son Muhammad Rahim Bi, who had accompanied<br />
him to Iran, to quell them.This led to Muhammad Rahim’s establishment<br />
as the next ataliq, a position which he strengthened upon Nadir
180 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Shah’s death in 1747 by having the still officially reigning Abulfayz murdered<br />
and ridding himself of the khan’s twelve-year-old son<br />
Abdalmumin in the same manner.Between that year and 1785, the<br />
Manghit ataliqs still maintained the fiction of legitimate Genghisid reign<br />
by allowing puppet khans to occupy the throne, but effective rule was in<br />
their hands at least since the second phase of Muhammad Rahim’s<br />
tenure of office (1753–58).Nevertheless, it is customary to associate the<br />
beginning of the Manghit Dynasty with the accession of Muhammad<br />
Rahim’s cousin Shah Murad (1785–1800).<br />
The Manghits were the first non-Genghisid dynasty to rule<br />
Transoxania since the Timurids (besides being the last native monarchy).<br />
A similar evolution was taking place in Khiva and Khoqand, where<br />
khans of Uzbek tribal origins no longer felt any need to legitimize their<br />
rule through a Genghisid genealogy (although in Khoqand, it seems, the<br />
Ming rulers did make an attempt to link themselves to Babur and thus<br />
to gain a Genghisid genealogy on the cognatic side).The new tack taken<br />
by the Manghits in Bukhara was emphasized by the switch of the ruler’s<br />
title from khan to emir, which in this case meant a shift from tribal Turco-<br />
Mongol to Islamic legitimation: for emir stood here for Amir (al-<br />
Muminin), “Commander of the Believers,” the once prestigious Arabic<br />
title of the Caliph (although according to some scholars Manghit rulers<br />
called themselves “emirs” simply because that was their original identity,<br />
emirs or begs, members of the Turco-Mongol tribal and military elite of<br />
non-Genghisid ancestry).<br />
The Manghits succeeded better than their Genghisid predecessors in<br />
the efforts to achieve centralized rule by reducing the power of Uzbek<br />
tribal chieftains and relying on a small, partly non-Uzbek standing army<br />
and on a Persian-speaking bureaucratic class often recruited from the<br />
emir’s Persian slaves; assuming the image of devout Islamic rulers and<br />
sponsoring the religious class, both secular and that of the Sufi orders,<br />
was another means of the emirs to consolidate their authority.This produced<br />
greater internal stability, population growth and a certain economic<br />
revival, which in turn benefited from increasing trade with<br />
Russia.At the same time, however, the despotic and conservative nature<br />
of the regime made it incapable of grasping the dramatic changes going<br />
on elsewhere, especially where it would matter the most, in Russia.This<br />
had two major consequences: one was conquest by Russia in 1868, the<br />
other the continuation of an almost medieval social structure of the<br />
emirate as an informal Russian protectorate until 1920.
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 181<br />
khiva<br />
After the establishment of the Abulkhayrid Shaybanids in Transoxania<br />
proper (1501), another group of nomadic Uzbeks from the Dasht-i<br />
Kipchak, the Yadigarid Shaybanids, installed themselves as the khans of<br />
Khwarazm by 1515.This event suggests that the passing of the whole<br />
of Central Asia proper under Uzbek rule was not an accident but<br />
resulted from the inability of the native population to replace the declining<br />
local power with a new alternative of its own.The Turco-Mongols<br />
to the north, by virtue of their nomadic lifestyle predisposed to military<br />
mobility, conquest, and rule, seldom failed to seize an opportunity to<br />
attempt incursions and conquest, and both Transoxania and Khwarazm<br />
proved perfect targets at this period.Yadigarid conquest and rule also<br />
demonstrated the force of geopolitics, for despite periodic attempts of<br />
the Abulkhayrid Shaybanids and their successors the Tuqay-Timurids<br />
to seize this territory, Khwarazm retained its own identity and independence<br />
throughout the long rule of this dynasty.It did so also under their<br />
successors the Inakids until the Russian conquest 1873, and even until<br />
1919 as a Russian protectorate.As in Transoxania, in Khwarazm too the<br />
dichotomy between the rulers and the ruled, the nomads and the sedentary<br />
urban or agricultural population, persisted or even grew: under the<br />
still charismatic Genghisid authority of the khans, political and military<br />
power remained in the hands of the Turkic tribal oligarchy, while the<br />
town dwellers and peasants, called Sarts, were excluded from it.A good<br />
number of these sedentaries were descended from the original Iranian<br />
population of the area, but unlike those of Transoxania they were by<br />
now almost totally Turkicized.<br />
Khwarazm under the Yadigarids suffered a general decline caused by<br />
a variety of factors.One was the turbulence of the political process<br />
referred to above.There was too much tribal movement and insubordination<br />
to let the khans impose the necessary law and order.The ensuing<br />
insecurity further aggravated the dwindling of long-distance trade that<br />
had been practiced by Khwarazm or that used to pass through it, linking<br />
the Silk Road network with the Pontic steppes and Russia.Gradually, the<br />
khanate’s center of gravity stabilized in an area on the left (southern)<br />
bank of the Amu Darya near the apex of the river’s delta, with Khiva,<br />
New Urgench, and New Kath as the foremost urban agglomerations.<br />
The right bank with the historical Kath was virtually abandoned to the<br />
encroaching Kyzyl Kum desert.Farther northwest the original Urgench,
182 A history of Inner Asia<br />
by then given the epithet Kunya (“Old’’), became a ruined site.Its<br />
destruction had been started by Timur in 1381, but as we have remarked<br />
in the introductory chapter, the area was not abandoned until 1576,<br />
when the Uzboy, the northwesternmost branch of the delta, swerved its<br />
course back to the Aral Sea instead of to the Caspian and thus left the<br />
city waterless.<br />
Immediately to the south of Yadigarid Khwarazm was the Kara Kum<br />
desert, extending all the way to the oases along the Murghab and Tejen<br />
rivers and those along the fringes of the Kopet Dagh and Balkhan<br />
mountains.In Sasanian and early Islamic times this region had been<br />
considered part of Khurasan, but now it was Turkmen territory, even<br />
more turbulent than the Uzbek territory of Khwarazm and<br />
Transoxania or the Kazakh territory of the Dasht-i Kipchak, for the<br />
Turkmen tribes never united to form a khanate of their own on a par<br />
with their neighbors to the north.They consisted of a number of tribes<br />
such as Tekke, Yomud, Ersary, Chavdur, Saryq, Salar, and Göklen; the<br />
first three were the most prominent, with the Tekke dominating the territory’s<br />
center, the Yomud the west (including the Caspian littoral), and<br />
the Ersary the east.Raiding Persian territories to the south had religious<br />
merit (since people there were of the heretical Shii denomination) and<br />
brought material rewards in the form of captives for the slave markets<br />
of Khiva and Bukhara.<br />
The Yadigarids were at times strong enough to encompass Turkmen<br />
territory within their realm; on such occasions, they conceived of their<br />
realm as consisting of two parts or sides, that of the “river” (su tarapy or<br />
su boyu, meaning the Amu Darya), and that of the “mountains” (dagh<br />
tarapy or dagh boyu).The northernmost part of the Amu Darya delta,<br />
called Aral, often remained outside the Yadigarids’ control and formed<br />
a khanate of its own, consisting of other Kipchak-speaking nomadic<br />
tribes whose range extended from the lower Syr Darya along the eastern<br />
shore of the Aral Sea all the way to the Amu Darya estuary.<br />
Another special area was the territory between the Aral and Caspian<br />
seas, whose two most important portions were known as Ust Yürt<br />
(“Plateau”) and Mangyshlak, the large broad peninsula stretching along<br />
the northeastern Caspian.Formerly pertaining, with Khwarazm, to the<br />
Golden Horde, this area owed its importance to its position on the trade<br />
routes between Transoxania and the Dasht-i Kipchak.It now lay outside<br />
the reach of any recognizable authority, and was inhabited by a changing<br />
mosaic of Turkmen and Kazakh tribes, serving as a corridor of<br />
movement for these tribes between the Dasht-i Kipchak and the south.
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 183<br />
In the seventeenth century, it was also the avenue of the aforementioned<br />
raids by the Kalmyks, who at one point forced two Turkmen tribes of the<br />
Mangyshlak peninsula to move to the northern Caucasus.<br />
It was the Yadigarid khan Arab Muhammad I (ruled 1603–23) who<br />
in 1619 chose Khiva as the headquarters of his rule.The city’s past went<br />
back to pre-Islamic times (as Khivak), but this was the first time it functioned<br />
as the capital of a realm; eventually, the khanate itself came to be<br />
known as that of Khiva, a case of psychological oscillation between capitals<br />
named after a country (“madinat Khwarazm” for Urgench in Ibn<br />
Battuta’s account) and, more frequently, countries named after a city<br />
(Bukhara, for example).Khiva came to play a minor but significant role<br />
in the history of Central Asian civilization, displaying an individuality<br />
that might be explained by both its geopolitical situation and its historical<br />
roots.An especially felicitous aspect of this individuality was a<br />
florescence of historiography in the seventeenth and nineteenth centuries.In<br />
the seventeenth, two khans, Abulghazi Bahadur Khan (1643–63)<br />
and his son and successor Anusha (1663–85), were the historians.<br />
Abulghazi Bahadur was a man of the pen no less than of the sword; as<br />
in the case of Zahir al-Din Babur a century and a half earlier, both his<br />
writings and his life are valuable documents on the state of Central<br />
Asian society and politics of the period.<br />
Abulghazi was born in 1603, shortly after his father Arab<br />
Muhammad I, himself newly enthroned, had repelled a raid by the<br />
“Yayik” Cossacks, that is, Cossacks of the River Ural.This dramatic<br />
episode symbolized the turbulent life awaiting the boy, though the<br />
Russian danger receded for at least another century.For the time being,<br />
the political infighting, alliances, and internecine, intertribal, and even<br />
up to a point interethnic and religious wars were reserved chiefly for the<br />
Inner Asian nomads themselves: the participants were Uzbeks,<br />
Turkmens, Kazakhs, Persians, and Kalmyks; and the leaders were the<br />
tribal chieftains, the Uzbek khans of Bukhara, the Kazakh khans of<br />
Turkestan and Tashkent, the Kalmyk khans of the lower Volga, and the<br />
shahs of Safavid Iran.<br />
Abulghazi was precipitated into this whirlwind at the age of twenty<br />
with the murder of his father by the latter’s two other sons, until personal<br />
skill and luck brought him to the throne after his brother Isfandiyar’s<br />
death in 1642.During the two intervening decades the young man<br />
visited as a refugee, ally, guest, or prisoner the Uzbek khan of Bukhara,<br />
the Kazakh khans of Turkestan – that is, the town of Turkestan – and<br />
of Tashkent, the Kalmyk khan of the lower Volga, and the Safavid shah
184 A history of Inner Asia<br />
of Iran at Hamadan, besides experiencing a spate of briefer sojourns<br />
which included Khiva.Abulghazi’s longest visit occurred, paradoxically<br />
but significantly, at Hamadan (1630–40), where the Uzbek prince, a<br />
Sunni Muslim, was an almost pampered prisoner of the Shii shah.<br />
There, Abulghazi could refine his understanding of Arabo-Persian<br />
culture, while at the same time he seized with enthusiasm the opportunity<br />
of studying manuscripts dealing with the history of the Turks and<br />
Mongols.Thus in addition to providing him with invaluable personal<br />
experience and knowledge of his Central Asian countrymen, these<br />
adventurous years gave Abulghazi the possibility to pursue his interest in<br />
history and to gather materials from written and oral sources, for what<br />
would eventually become two major histories, the Shajara-i terakime, and<br />
the Shajara-i turk.<br />
It was the death of his elder brother Isfandiyar in 1642 that enabled<br />
Abulghazi, after a final year of maneuvering, to gain the throne.Once<br />
installed, he proceeded, somewhat like the Roman Emperor Claudius,<br />
to write history, while imposing his own will on its contemporary course.<br />
Abulghazi had to remain active as a warrior khan if he wanted to stay<br />
in power: he had gained the throne partly thanks to the support of the<br />
Uzbek party – chieftains of the Uzbek tribes of Khwarazm, in contrast<br />
to the Turkmen card played by his predecessor; so throughout much of<br />
his reign Abulghazi had to mount successful expeditions in order to<br />
reward his Uzbek supporters and hold the turbulent Turkmen tribes of<br />
the Kara Kum and Mangyshlak areas in check.<br />
Unlike most Central Asian historians of the time, Abulghazi wrote his<br />
books not in Persian but in his native Turki.This is one of several parallels<br />
between him and Babur.His works are thus linguistic documents<br />
apart from their primary value as historical sources.The first of the two,<br />
the Shajara-i terakime, was completed in 1659; it narrates the history of the<br />
Turco-Mongols, in particular of those of the Genghisid dynasty, as the<br />
author could piece it together from such written sources as Rashid al-<br />
Din’s Jami al-tavarikh, Sharaf al-din Yazdi’s Zafername, but more interestingly<br />
also from other now lost sources such as seventeen Genghisnames or<br />
histories of the Genghisids, besides oral epics and legends.Even more<br />
valuable is the second work, Shajara-i turk, 1 which was still being written<br />
at the time of Abulghazi’s death; his son and successor Anusha com-<br />
1 Edition and French translation by P.Desmaisons, Histoire des Mongols et des Tatares par Abou-l-Gazi<br />
Behadour Khan (St.Petersburg, 1871–74), 2 vols.
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 185<br />
pleted the manuscript.It at first overlaps with the earlier book, but then<br />
it focuses on the history of the author’s own family and dynasty until<br />
1663.An excerpt from Abulghazi’s preface to the latter work conveys its<br />
spirit:<br />
Reasons for writing this book: The son of Arab Muhammad-Khan, Abulghazi<br />
Bahadur Khan, the Genghisid, the Kwarazmian, says: “Historians have<br />
written, both in Turki and Persian (Turki ve Farsi tili birlen), the history of the<br />
ancestors and descendants of Genghis Khan who had reigned in different countries<br />
...Gradually, ten, twenty or thirty such histories were written on behalf<br />
of these sovereigns.I myself now have before me eighteen tomes on the history<br />
of the descendants of Genghis Khan who have reigned either in Iran or in<br />
Turan.However, both because of negligence on the part of our ancestors and<br />
of the ignorance of the people of Khwarazm, no one has written a history of<br />
the rulers of our family ...I had at first planned to charge someone with the<br />
task of writing this history, but I found nobody capable of doing so.This is why<br />
I have decided to do it myself ...Now do not think that while writing this<br />
history, I have been guided by any feeling of partiality, or altered the truth, or<br />
praised myself without justification.God has been generous to me, and in particular<br />
He has granted me knowledge of three things: (1) Knowledge of the art<br />
of war, of its principles and rules; (2) Knowledge of diverse types of poetry, such<br />
as mesnevi, qasida, ghazal, muqatta, rubai, as well as knowledge of Arabic,<br />
Persian, and Turki; and (3) Exact knowledge of names, of the life and deeds of<br />
all the rulers who have reigned since Adam until our own day in Arabia as well<br />
as in Iran, Turan, and Mongolia.” 2<br />
Abulghazi subsequently mentions one of his principal sources, the<br />
Jami al-Tavarikh (“Compendium of Histories”) compiled in Persian by<br />
Rashid al-Din.This principal vizier of the Ikhanid ruler Ghazan Khan<br />
(1295–1304) was commissioned to do so by his sovereign, who had<br />
issued the order with the following justification: his people were forgetting<br />
both their language and their past.Unless the dynasty’s and the<br />
Mongols’ history were written while there were still several old-timers<br />
left who remembered some of the lore and could read texts in<br />
Mongolian, the memory would be irretrievably lost.Ghazan Khan<br />
placed these Mongols at the service of Rashid al-Din, and the monumental<br />
work that resulted from the cooperation came to enjoy great<br />
vogue among the Mongol and Turkic elites of Central Asia.When<br />
Abulghazi decided to write his book, he was faced with up to thirty manuscripts<br />
of the Jami al-Tavarikh, besides a number of other histories.This<br />
was a mixed blessing for the following reason:<br />
2 Ibid., vol.I, pp.1–2 (Turki text) and vol.II, pp.1–3 (French trans.).
186 A history of Inner Asia<br />
For 372 years that ignorant scribblers have kept copying this book [the Jami al-<br />
Tavarikh], twenty or even thirty manuscripts have been produced.With each<br />
redaction, errors have crept into some words, to the point where a whole third<br />
or even half are incorrect.The names of mountains, rivers, places, persons are<br />
Mongol or Turki.Both authors and copyists were Persians or Tajiks, and knew<br />
neither Mongol nor Turki.If you try to teach a Tajik [a Turkic or Mongol<br />
word], his tongue will not learn it, so how could he write it [correctly]?<br />
[Meanwhile] God the Sublime has bestowed upon this poor slave [i.e. me] the<br />
knowledge of the Turki and Persian languages, words, terms more than [He has<br />
bestowed upon] any Turk or Tajik; what is more, for a certain reason I spent<br />
one year among the Kalmyks, and familiarized myself with the Mongol language,<br />
terminology, and customs.I have written this history, its good and bad<br />
[events], in the Turki language.Now the Turki I have used is such that a fiveyear-old<br />
boy will understand it. In order to make [the meaning] clear, I have<br />
refrained from adding Chaghatay, Persian, or Arabic words3 Abulghazi has demonstrated in these preliminary pages his remarkable<br />
lucidity and good taste.Like Babur, he rises above the period’s<br />
norms which required that an author display literary erudition and<br />
verbal virtuosity.His remark about Chaghatay looks at first sight puzzling.In<br />
terms of modern Turcology, it was indeed Chaghatay in which<br />
he wrote his works, just as Babur did his.In this instance, however,<br />
Abulghazi differentiates between Chaghatay and Turki, the way one<br />
could differentiate between Ottoman Turkish and modern Turkish.He<br />
speaks here somewhat like Kemal Atatürk who championed a<br />
“purification” of Turkey’s Turkish by replacing words of Arabic and<br />
Persian origin with genuinely Turkic ones.While in Turkey this process<br />
was later – after Atatürk – exaggerated, for nationalistic reasons, to the<br />
point of sometimes defeating the main purpose, that of intelligibility, for<br />
Abulghazi the latter was the guide: one proof is the very word he used<br />
for “clear, intelligible”: rawshan, which is Persian but which by his time<br />
had become completely naturalized in Turki.<br />
Shir Ghazi (1715–28) was the last effective Yadigarid khan.The reign<br />
of this patron of learning and literature began auspiciously when in<br />
1717–18 he withstood what may have been the first official onslaught of<br />
colonialism: for Peter the Great sent to Khiva a 750-men-strong expedition,<br />
led by a Circassian named Bekovich (Bekovich Cherkasskiy), but<br />
Shir Ghazi destroyed it.In 1728, however, internecine tribal struggle<br />
between the Kongrat and Manghit tribes led to the khan’s murder and<br />
to the enthronement of candidates put forward by the rival factions;<br />
3 Ibid., vol.I, pp.36–37 (Turki text) and vol.II, pp.35–36 (French trans.).
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 187<br />
some of these phantom khans were Yadigarids, usually sponsored by the<br />
Kongrat tribe; others were procured from among the inexhaustible pool<br />
of other Juchids proliferating among the Kazakhs and sponsored by the<br />
Manghits.Nominally, however, the Yadigarids ruled until 1804, when<br />
the last khan of the line, Abulghazi III, was removed from the throne by<br />
Iltüzer, an Uzbek beg of Kongrat affiliation and the grandson of a line<br />
of chieftains who had begun to assert their own power as early as 1762;<br />
in that year Temir Ghazi Khan appointed Mehmet Emin as inak or<br />
prime minister; the next year the latter killed the khan and a number of<br />
Manghit tribal chieftains who were his supporters, and ruled Khiva<br />
while parading eleven more khans on the throne; some of these were<br />
Yadigarids, others of different but always Genghisid ancestry.<br />
With the Inakids a new and final chapter began in the history of the<br />
khanate of Khiva.One innovation was the fact that as in Bukhara, for<br />
the first time a non-Genghisid dynasty acquired not only effective but<br />
also titular power; another was the tendency of the Inakids to place<br />
more power in the hands of Sarts, members of the non-tribal urban or<br />
other sedentary classes, with the implicit goal of shaking off the power<br />
of the tribal aristocracy of whom they themselves were a product; yet<br />
another was its very finality: the Inakids presided over a khanate that<br />
would try to cope with the challenges of the nineteenth century, the foremost<br />
of which was the onslaught of European colonialism represented<br />
here by Russia, before collapsing in the upheavals brought about by the<br />
Bolshevik Revolution.<br />
khoqand<br />
The valley of Fergana has been, as we have seen, a special part of<br />
Central Asia since antiquity, not unlike Khwarazm in its individuality<br />
and geopolitical situation.One could visualize the two as the wings of<br />
an area whose central body was Transoxania proper or Sogdia, with<br />
Khwarazm on the left and Fergana on the right as one faces north.The<br />
two regions were delimited differently but equally distinctively:<br />
Khwarazm by the surrounding deserts and the Aral Sea, Fergana by the<br />
Tianshan and Pamir mountains.Both regions owed their fertility to irrigation<br />
made possible by the two great rivers of Central Asia, the Amu<br />
Darya with its ramified delta in the case of Khwarazm, the Syr Darya<br />
with its mesh of tributaries in the case of Fergana.And both regions,<br />
lying within the network of Silk Road arteries, had commercial and<br />
political links with distant but important countries: to the east, China; to
188 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the west, Russia and the Mediterranean world; to the south, Iran and<br />
India; and to the north, the nomads of the Eurasian steppe and the<br />
dwellers of the taiga.Nevertheless, unlike Khwarazm, Fergana never<br />
rose to form a distinct political unit of its own beyond the existence of a<br />
scattering of local landlords – that is, before the eighteenth century, or,<br />
to put it in another way, before the eve of the Russian colonial conquest.<br />
This development was foreshadowed, however, by the status of soyurghal<br />
which it acquired toward the end of the Timurid period, and then again<br />
by its role as a theocratic state ruled by khwajas analogous to those in<br />
Sinkiang and Tashkent.We have seen that the Timurid Abu Said had<br />
allotted Fergana to his son Umar Shaykh.Following the khan’s death in<br />
1469, his son Ahmad succeeded him in Samarkand, while the latter’s<br />
brother Umar Shaykh was able to consolidate his position and to rule<br />
from the city of Andijan until he died in 1494 and was succeeded by his<br />
son Babur.Andijan, located in the east of the province near the<br />
Tianshan mountains, had by then gained some prominence among the<br />
region’s agglomerations, and it figures among the seven cities enumerated<br />
by its illustrious native in the Baburname.After the Uzbek conquest<br />
of Transoxania and Babur’s withdrawal to Afghanistan and India,<br />
however, the city lost its status as capital, and the province lost its relative<br />
independence, apart from the inordinate power of local tribal chieftains<br />
endemic in the khanate of Bukhara.<br />
Curiously but significantly, the first new step toward fuller independence<br />
was successfully accomplished not by one of the beys or tribal<br />
leaders but by a khwaja of Chadak, a locality in northern Fergana<br />
between Chust and Namangan.This was the expression of a movement<br />
toward theocratic rule whose earlier forms had appeared already with<br />
the sadrs of Bukhara several centuries back; but whereas there the protagonists<br />
were members of the official religious establishment, the<br />
emphasis gradually shifted toward the Sufi shaykhs and dervishes, whose<br />
charismatic power over the masses enabled them to vie with the tribal<br />
leaders and dynasties in their quest for temporal rule.The Kashgarian<br />
part of Sinkiang, as we have seen, developed as the most salient example<br />
of this evolution.By the seventeenth century the trend toward theocratic<br />
rule occurred also in Fergana, and a little later Tashkent too came under<br />
the rule of a khwaja regime.In the long run, none of these theocratic<br />
states managed to survive the determined action of tribal dynasties and<br />
chieftains, and even less that of the Manchu empire of China; but their<br />
occasional rule was perhaps less important than the influence they<br />
retained at the popular level.
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 189<br />
We have seen how in Kashgaria the khwajas competed for power with<br />
the last remnants of the Chaghatayids, and then lobbied for it at the<br />
courts of the Dalai Lamas and Jungars before succumbing to the<br />
Manchu conquerors of Sinkiang.In Fergana, they had to yield, by 1710,<br />
to Shahrukh Biy, a chieftain of the Ming, one of the Uzbek tribes drifting<br />
into Transoxania and adjacent areas from the Kipchak steppe.The<br />
rise of the Ming Dynasty – thus called after the tribe, and of course<br />
totally unrelated to the Ming Dynasty of China – from the position of<br />
tribal leaders to that of rulers of an expanding khanate filled much<br />
of the eighteenth century.It was associated with the growth of the city<br />
of Khoqand from a site where the new rulers built a fortified palace.<br />
Khoqand, situated in the western part of Fergana some distance to the<br />
south of the Syr Darya, may have been chosen instead of an existing<br />
capital like Andijan partly because it was farther from the Tianshan<br />
mountains and thus less exposed to raids by the Kyrgyz and Kalmyks.<br />
On the other hand, the new capital was closer to the possessions of the<br />
emirs of Bukhara, and subsequently suffered in the wars between the<br />
two khanates; but again, this could and did turn into an asset when<br />
the Khoqandis were strong enough to become conquerors themselves in<br />
their favorite direction, that is, southern Kazakhstan and the eastern<br />
confines of the emirate of Bukhara.<br />
The title that the Ming applied to themselves throughout the eighteenth<br />
century was the relatively modest biy (local form of the pan-Turkic<br />
title beg), but their possessions acquired the definite structure of a principality<br />
under Irdana Biy (1740–69).With most of Fergana under his<br />
control, Irdana Biy saw himself both forced and tempted to engage in<br />
international politics and alliances.His reign coincided with upheavals<br />
in both Bukhara and Sinkiang, a circumstance that may have facilitated<br />
the evolution of Fergana into what would soon become the khanate of<br />
Khoqand.Irdana Biy’s recognition of Manchu suzerainty, quoted by<br />
scholars on the basis of Chinese sources, may have been more a clever<br />
expression of respect for a mighty neighbor than an actual state of vassaldom,<br />
and it harkened back to pre-Islamic times, when local rulers in<br />
Fergana had had a similar relationship with Tang China.At the same<br />
time, Irdana Biy formed a curious alliance with Ahmed Shah Durrani<br />
of Afghanistan (1747–73), possibly against the troublesome Kyrgyz<br />
tribes of the Tianshan rather than against China herself; in any case, the<br />
Afghan connection was a short-lived episode overshadowed by<br />
Khoqand’s lasting relations with its neighbors to the east, west, and<br />
north.The consolidation continued under Narbuta Biy (1769–88), and
190 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Khoqand began to assume urban proportions when a madrasa, the<br />
Madrasa-i Mir, was built there.Chinese “suzerainty” continued, but its<br />
ceremonial nature was illustrated by the fact that Beijing addressed the<br />
rulers of Khoqand as “khans,” according to a Russian visitor.At any<br />
rate, it was Narbuta’s son and successor Alim who some time around<br />
1800 officially asumed the title of khan.<br />
It was indeed under Narbuta Biy’s sons Alim (1788–10) and Umar<br />
(1810–1822), and grandson Muhammad Ali or Madali (1822–42), that<br />
Khoqand came into its own as a vigorous and expanding khanate.<br />
Expansion was undertaken especially in the north and northwest, where<br />
between 1803 and 1809 the cities of Tashkent, Chimkent, and Sayram<br />
were conquered and Akmeshit (Kazakh pronunciation of Aq masjid,<br />
“White mosque”; Perovsk of Tsarist Russia and Kyzyl Orda of the<br />
Soviet period) was founded in 1820, and northeast into Kyrgyz territory,<br />
where a stronghold was built at Bishkek.These acquisitions and<br />
fortifications, garrisoned by Khoqandi troops, served a military purpose,<br />
but some also had considerable economic importance: at Akmeshit for<br />
example trade routes between Central Asia and Russia converged and<br />
intersected.<br />
Khoqand now competed with Bukhara for primacy in Central Asia,<br />
and the khans had the temerity to claim parts of the emirate’s eastern<br />
territory, including the towns of Jizakh and Ura-tepe.During the rule of<br />
Madali Khan the khanate reached its greatest extent and power.Its territories<br />
stretched from the Kipchak steppe with Akmeshit, Turkistan,<br />
Tashkent, the valleys of the Chu and of the lower Ili – thus from what<br />
is now southern Kazakhstan and northern Uzbekistan, to the Pamir<br />
regions of Karatekin, Darvaz, Shughnan, Rushan, and Gulab – thus<br />
comprising much of what is now Tajikistan, and they included most of<br />
modern Kyrgyzstan.Moreover, as a paradoxical and bizarre encroachment<br />
on Chinese sovereignty in Sinkiang, the rulers of Khoqand in 1826<br />
extracted the right to send tax collectors among the Muslim population<br />
of Altishahr (Aksu, Ush Turfan, Kashgar, Yangishahr, Yarkand, and<br />
Khotan), after the collapse of Khwaja Jihangir’s rebellion in Kashgar,<br />
which they themselves had supported.Meanwhile they had their first<br />
official contacts with Russia: in 1812 a Khoqandi embassy visited<br />
Orenburg, and the following year the Tsar’s envoys came to Khoqand.<br />
Most remarkable, however, were the activity and energy characteristic<br />
of this khanate, which produced a minor renaissance in art and literature,<br />
and an upswing in agricultural production through the<br />
construction of impressive irrigation canals.It is hard to decide how
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 191<br />
much of it was due to the khans themselves, and how much was generated<br />
by an internal dynamism in the area and its population that simply<br />
coincided with Ming rule, or how much was due to the influx of refugees<br />
from turbulent Bukhara, or again what the growing trade with<br />
Russia had to do with it.The first major canal, the Shahr-i Khan Say<br />
(“The Stream of the Khan’s City,” so named after the new town whose<br />
foundation accompanied the project), was dug under the rule of Umar<br />
Khan to the west of Andijan; 120 kilometers long, it irrigated an area of<br />
about 77,700 hectares.Similar projects appeared elsewhere, and not<br />
only in Fergana but also in the annexed fringes of the Greater and<br />
Middle Hordes, which were administered by governors from Tashkent;<br />
in the area of Tashkent itself the Khan Ariq (“Royal Canal”) was dug in<br />
1835; canal-building reached its height under the beglerbegi (governor)<br />
Mirza Ahmad (1853–58), thus on the very eve of the Russian conquest,<br />
and covered an area from the city of Turkestan to the valley of the Chu;<br />
and even after the conquest had already begun and the khan had<br />
acknowledged the Tsar’s suzerainty, the largest canal in Fergana, the<br />
Ulugh Nahr (“Large River”), was dug under the sponsorship of the last<br />
Ming khan, Khudayar (his third rule, 1865–75).Silk and cotton, the cultivation<br />
of which was an ancient tradition in Fergana, continued to<br />
supply a local textile industry; cotton, moreover, had by then become an<br />
increasingly important cash crop grown for export to Russia, partly due<br />
to the effects of the Civil War on American exports.<br />
Urban architecture, both civic and religious, benefited from the new<br />
prosperity.The great mosque of Khoqand, called Madrasa-i Jami<br />
because of its double function as a school and a mosque, was built by<br />
Umar Khan.Also remarkable were the madrasas Hakim Ayin and<br />
Sultan Murad Bey, and the royal palace called Urda; the last-named<br />
building, completed by Khudayar Khan in 1871 and thus on the eve of<br />
the Russian conquest, is remarkable for its facade decorated in a characteristic<br />
local style and the painted wooden ceiling of the main reception<br />
hall.Under Umar Khan and Madali Khan there sprang up a<br />
florescence of literature, above all poetry, remarkable especially for its<br />
Turki language, and for the appearance of women among the poets.<br />
One of these luminaries was Nadira (1790–1842), the wife of Umar<br />
Khan and mother of Madali Khan.A native of Babur’s birthplace<br />
Andijan, she gained fame as a dominant figure in Khoqand for several<br />
reasons – her beauty, her art, and her power as the khan’s wife and his<br />
successor’s mother.Nadira’s poems, in Turki and Persian, have been collected<br />
in two divans.The theme of one of her poems is the reunion of
192 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the faithful every evening during the month of Ramadan, after having<br />
fasted all day; it is an occasion not only to enjoy the meal but also the<br />
company of friends, until the wee hours of the morning if the means are<br />
there and the companions congenial.Such was Umar Khan’s circle, but<br />
women were excluded: here the strictures of Islamic morals prevailed<br />
over the lingering nomadic customs which gave women greater freedom,<br />
and over the unconventional intellectual atmosphere at the khan’s court<br />
which appreciated brilliance, even if it was displayed by women.The<br />
religious establishment, however, eventually had its revenge: Nadira’s<br />
behavior, deemed an impermissible innovation (bida) from the Islamic<br />
point of view, was to play a role in her condemnation and execution<br />
along with her son Madali and her grandson Ali in 1842.<br />
Umar Khan cultivated the friendship of the religious establishment<br />
partly for political reasons, for he strove to enhance his own power by<br />
breaking that of his tribal peers, the Uzbek chieftains.Moreover, he<br />
created a mercenary army composed not of Uzbeks or even other tribesmen<br />
but of the mostly Iranian highlanders from the Pamirs.Under his<br />
successors, strains also appeared more generally between the settled<br />
population and the nomadic elements.Of the settled citizens, those who<br />
spoke Turki were here called Sarts, those who spoke Persian were called<br />
Tajiks; the ranks of the sedentaries were also swelling with the rapidly<br />
sedentarizing Uzbek tribes like the Ming.The still nomadic elements<br />
included the Kipchak tribe (this is what the word Kipchak means here,<br />
a connotation different from the ethnolinguistic term applied by modern<br />
linguists to those Turks who spoke or speak the Kipchak form of Turkic),<br />
who had recently moved into Fergana from the Kazakh steppe (following<br />
in this other tribes such as the Ming who had arrived a century<br />
earlier), and the Kyrgyz nomads of the khanate’s mountainous periphery<br />
fringing the Fergana valley to the east and south.These tensions,<br />
perhaps more than the routinely mentioned dissolute character of<br />
Madali Khan and of his successors, and the readiness of the emirs of<br />
Bukhara to intervene and exploit the situation, caused the decline and<br />
collapse of the khanate’s political structure between 1840 and 1876.In<br />
1840 rebels asked the emir Nasr Allah for help.The latter came with his<br />
troops and defeated Madali, who had to declare himself a vassal of<br />
Bukhara; two years later another rebellion overthrew Madali, however,<br />
he was killed while trying to flee, and Khoqand was occupied by the<br />
troops of Nasr Allah, who this time annexed the territory outright.His<br />
governor was almost instantly driven out, and Madali’s uncle Shir Ali<br />
Khan (ruled 1842–45) assumed power.The emir again appeared before
Bukhara, Khiva, and Khoqand 193<br />
Khoqand in 1843 and besieged it for forty days, but an attack on<br />
Bukhara by the khan of Khiva Allahqulikhan forced Nasr Allah to hurry<br />
home and saved the city and the khan, who also recovered Khujand and<br />
Tashkent.<br />
The depravity of some khans, wars with Bukhara, and the unresolved<br />
tension between the khans’ authority, tribal factions, and the settled population,<br />
together with the resulting civil wars, eventually deprived the<br />
khanate of what there was left of political stability, and in the end the<br />
Russians were virtually forced to impose their own solution.This<br />
instability is illustrated by the career of the last ruler, Khudayar<br />
(1845–75): he was removed from the throne in 1858 when another<br />
member of the dynasty, Malla Khan, replaced him (1858–62); in 1862<br />
he regained his throne, but lost it to yet another relative (1863–65);<br />
finally in 1865 Khudayar ascended the throne for the third and last time,<br />
thanks to the support he had received from the emir of Bukhara<br />
Muzaffar.The squabbles among the Central Asians were characteristic<br />
of the incomprehension they had of the historic events that were changing<br />
their world.The Russians captured Tashkent in that same year of<br />
1865; in 1868 they defeated the emir of Bukhara and, drastically reducing<br />
his territory, made him their de facto vassal.In the same year, without<br />
even having to resort to military action, they imposed a treaty on<br />
Khudayar Khan that had a similar form, and after having annexed all<br />
of the khanate’s northwestern and northern territories.The new<br />
arrangement, however, did not suffice to save the khan or the khanate,<br />
in contrast to Bukhara.In 1873 a series of rebellions, led by Ishaq Hasan<br />
and Abdurahman Awtobashi, broke out and by July 1875 forced<br />
Khudayar Khan to seek refuge at the Russian mission.The Russians<br />
helped him leave the khanate and find safety in Tashkent, which by then<br />
was the administrative center of the newly established guberniya or imperial<br />
province of Turkestan.Khudayar’s son Nasriddin was placed on the<br />
throne at Khoqand, but in October of the same year he was overthrown<br />
by a usurper named Pulat Khan and had to seek asylum in Russian-held<br />
Khujand.The disorders in the khanate continued, until in February<br />
1876 the Russians occupied the entire territory and annexed it, as the<br />
oblast (region) of Fergana, to the province of Turkestan.
SIBERIAN<br />
RUSSIA<br />
R U S S I A<br />
Omsk<br />
Orenburg<br />
Semipalatinsk<br />
Akmolinsk<br />
Ural'sk<br />
Oblast'<br />
of<br />
Semipalatinsk<br />
Oblast'<br />
of<br />
Akmolinsk<br />
Turgai<br />
Oblast'<br />
of<br />
Turgai<br />
GOVERNORATE-GENERAL<br />
STEPPE<br />
Oblast<br />
of<br />
Ural'sk<br />
Lake<br />
Balkhash Oblast'<br />
of<br />
Semirech'e<br />
Vernyi<br />
Oblast'<br />
of<br />
Syr Darya<br />
Aral<br />
Sea<br />
GOVERNORATE - GENERAL TURKESTAN<br />
Khanate of<br />
Khiva<br />
Tashkent<br />
Oblast'<br />
Oblast'<br />
of<br />
Samarkand Fergana<br />
Bukhara Samarkand of<br />
Emirate<br />
Fergana<br />
of Bukhara<br />
Khiva<br />
Oblast'<br />
of<br />
Transcaspia<br />
C a s p i a n S e a<br />
SINKIANG<br />
(CHINESE<br />
TURKESTAN)<br />
Ashkhabad<br />
BRITISH<br />
INDIA<br />
AFGHANISTAN<br />
I R A N<br />
Central Asia<br />
under Tsarist Russia<br />
Map 6 Central Asia under Tsarist Russia
chapter fifteen<br />
The Russian conquest and rule of Central Asia<br />
The time, manner, and purpose of this conquest can be divided into two<br />
stages: in the first, Russia acquired the greater part of Kazakhstan<br />
except its Semireche and Syr Darya – thus southernmost – segments; in<br />
the second, the latter two and all the rest, thus territories of present-day<br />
Uzbekistan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Turkmenistan.The earlier<br />
stage was longer and more gradual (1730–1848), and at certain points<br />
structurally resembled the preceding acquisition of Siberia (which in<br />
turn could be viewed as an analogy to the “winning of the West” by the<br />
United States); the later stage was relatively brief – lasting from 1864 to<br />
1884, the decisive move, however, being compressed into several campaigns<br />
between 1865 and 1868 – and stood squarely in the psychological<br />
context of Europe’s contemporary “scramble for the colonies.”<br />
By 1730 the Kazakhs, as we have seen, had asserted themselves as a<br />
distinct group of nomadic tribes living in the eastern part of the Dashti<br />
Kipchak, speaking a distinctive Kipchak Turkic idiom, but lacking<br />
overall political unity.As a somewhat peculiar substitute for the latter,<br />
though, the tribes had coalesced into three confederations, the aforementioned<br />
Greater, Middle, and Lesser Hordes.Geography as much as<br />
tribal politics no doubt played a role in their formation: the Greater<br />
Horde occupied a territory roughly coterminous with Semireche, the<br />
Middle Horde that of central Kazakhstan, and the Lesser Horde that of<br />
western Kazakhstan.Although the Russian “orda” and English “horde”<br />
are originally Turkic words, the more common Kazakh name for their<br />
hordes was “jüz,” meaning “hundred” (thus Ulu Jüz, Orta Jüz, Kishi<br />
Jüz).Except for brief periods early in their history, the Kazakhs never<br />
managed to forge a unified khanate that would in turn become a steppe<br />
empire, in the manner of their medieval Turkic and Mongol predecessors.One<br />
of the reasons for this may have been the proliferation of<br />
sultans – in this instance steppe aristocrats claiming Genghisid descent<br />
who alone were entitled to become khans – still holding positions of<br />
195
196 A history of Inner Asia<br />
prestige and some authority, but stifling the rise of a truly charismatic<br />
new leader able to repeat the exploits of his great ancestor.On the other<br />
hand, the prestige enjoyed by the steppe aristocracy of Genghisid ancestry<br />
may have been a factor in the peculiar vertical division of Qazaq<br />
society into two layers, the so-called “White Bone” and “Black Bone”<br />
(Aq Süyek, Qara Süyek).Certain other credentials, such as descent from<br />
eminent Muslim ancestors, could also entitle some individuals, often<br />
called qojas (Kazakh form of khwaja) to claim “White Bone” status.The<br />
social and political structure of Kazakh society received a definitive<br />
codification, known as jeti jarghy (“seven verdicts”), during the reign of<br />
the khan Tauke (1680–1718) somewhat in the manner of the Mongol<br />
yasa, but took much longer to be written down – in fact only after the<br />
annexation of Kazakhstan to the Russian empire.<br />
The rise of Russia as a modern power, which began under the aforementioned<br />
Ivan IV (“The Terrible”; ruled 1547–84) and was quickened<br />
by Peter the Great (ruled 1682–1725), made Russia overwhelmingly<br />
stronger than any of her Asian neighbors.In view of this new and<br />
growing disparity, the Russian penetration of the Kazakh steppe was<br />
only a matter of time and determination.The initially slow pace and<br />
oscillating success may have been due to the fact that the occupation of<br />
Siberia presented enough challenge and reward for the time being.The<br />
Russians at first contented themselves with accepting offers of vassaldom<br />
from various Kazakh leaders, without actually acquiring military<br />
or administrative control over their territory beyond the erection of<br />
fortified posts gradually infringing upon it.This complex process started<br />
in 1730, when Abilay (Abulkhayr), khan of the Lesser Horde, expressed<br />
his wish that the Tsar be his suzerain, and the request was granted.For<br />
much of the eighteenth century, Russia received similar assurances of<br />
loyalty from other Kazakh leaders, and discovered that they were little<br />
more than expedient declarations designed to bolster the chieftains’<br />
positions in intertribal wars.Similar statements of allegiance were<br />
made to Manchu emperors of China after their conquest of Sinkiang<br />
in 1758.<br />
Nevertheless, a firmer hold on the northwestern, northern and northeastern<br />
fringes of Kazakhstan began to take shape during the reign of<br />
Catherine the Great (ruled 1762–96), with creeping colonization by<br />
Russian peasants and implantation of military posts deeper in Kazakh<br />
territory, such as Akmolinsk and Turgai.The kindred Tatars of the<br />
Volga had since the fall of Kazan in 1552 been safely incorporated in<br />
the Russian empire, and their elites were now experiencing something
Russian conquest and rule 197<br />
of an economic and spiritual renaissance.Tatar traders spread out into<br />
Central Asia as well, and also represented Russian commercial interests<br />
there; the government, eager to protect the latter, saw in these Muslim<br />
subjects convenient proxies, and trade flourished.Moreover, in those<br />
parts of Kazakhstan that had by then come under a sufficient degree of<br />
Russian control, St.Petersburg deemed it practical to consolidate that<br />
control through the at first sight surprising device of tying the still only<br />
marginally Muslim Kazakhs more firmly to Islam; the idea was that this<br />
would entice the unruly nomads to a more sedate way of life, especially<br />
since it was the tsar’s subjects, the Tatar mullahs, who spread among the<br />
Kazakhs as preceptors and even built mosques and madrasas.Equally<br />
remarkable was the concomitant reluctance of the Russian government<br />
to allow proselytizing activity by its Orthodox subjects.This policy of<br />
using Tatar elites, both mercantile and religious, as the Russian government’s<br />
advanced infrastructure in Kazakhstan, devised in the 1770s,<br />
continued until 1860, thus until the eve of the final drive to conquer the<br />
core of Central Asia.<br />
Somewhat curiously, Russia’s interest in Central Asia proper, the area<br />
south of the Syr Darya, appeared even before her first involvement with<br />
Kazakhstan.In 1717–18 Peter the Great sent the aforementioned expedition<br />
of some 300 men under Colonel Bekovich-Cherkasskiy to Khiva;<br />
its mission was less to conquer than to reconnoiter and establish a<br />
contact, but it was as an enemy that the khan of Khiva Shirghazi<br />
(1715–28) met the troop and destroyed it.A similar attempt more than<br />
a century later, in 1839–40, led by General Perovskiy, foundered on<br />
logistical problems, for the khanate was well shielded from attack on<br />
most sides by inhospitable deserts.Aside from Central Asia itself, the<br />
goal of both these expeditions may have been to probe possible routes<br />
to India; this in turn remained more a daydream than a real plan, and<br />
was diametrically opposed to the methodical and realistic manner characteristic<br />
of Russian expansion.<br />
We began our story by dividing the Russian conquest of Central Asia<br />
into two stages, 1730–1848 and 1864–84; the first stage could in turn be<br />
subdivided into two phases, of which the second occurred between 1822<br />
and 1848, for that was when St.Petersburg resolved to eliminate the four<br />
Kazakh hordes altogether (a fourth, minor horde called Bükey’s horde,<br />
had meanwhile formed to the west of the Lesser Horde between the<br />
Ural and Volga rivers): the Middle Horde was suppressed in 1822, the<br />
Lesser in 1824, Bükey’s in 1845, and the Greater in 1848.<br />
The suppression of the Kazakh hordes removed any ambivalence
198 A history of Inner Asia<br />
about Russia’s dominance in the bulk of Kazakh territory, but it still left<br />
out its southern fringe.There were two reasons for that: logistical, for<br />
that area – primarily the middle and lower course of the Syr Darya –<br />
was rather remote and in parts separated from northern and central<br />
Kazakhstan by semi-arid stretches; and political, because it had by then<br />
come under the sway of the khanate of Khoqand.A conflict with<br />
Khoqand might have caused complications with Britain and China,<br />
which St.Petersburg wanted to avoid.Its acquisition thus required a<br />
different psychological, diplomatic, and military strategy.Nevertheless,<br />
by 1853 the Russians wrested Akmeshit from the Khoqandis.A year<br />
later they founded Vernyi – the eventual Kazakh capital Almaty – and<br />
pushed on to Bishkek, today the capital of Kyrgyzstan but then a<br />
Khoqandi frontier post.The strategy of these operations illustrates the<br />
vast resources at Russia’s disposal: her giant pincers began to squeeze the<br />
remnant of Kazakhstan from west and east, the latter approach being<br />
realized from her Siberian frontier.The brief halt that followed was<br />
caused by external circumstances: the Crimean War, and the uprising<br />
led by Shaykh Shamil in the Caucasus.These hindrances disappeared<br />
with the advent of the 1860s, and the stage was set for the final assault:<br />
it began in 1864 with the fall of Chimkent and Aulie Ata (now Jambul),<br />
and culminated with the storming of Tashkent in June 1865.<br />
Tashkent is of course the capital of Uzbekistan, and as such we associate<br />
it with that republic rather than with Kazakhstan.In 1865,<br />
however, the event was perceived more as the final step in the conquest<br />
of Kazakhstan.For the time being, accommodation with Khoqand,<br />
Bukhara, and Khiva, rather than their conquest, was viewed by the principal<br />
policy planners in St.Petersburg as preferable to any further push<br />
southward that might provoke Britain to action from India’s northwest<br />
frontier.The clashes with Khoqandi forces did not yet mean war, and<br />
Tashkent was stormed almost against the wishes of the Russian government<br />
by the brash General Chernyaev.<br />
Yet a mere three years later, in 1868, the Russians were at war with<br />
the emir of Bukhara, routing his forces in several battles, annexing a substantial<br />
part of the emirate’s territory (including Samarkand), and allowing<br />
the rest to exist as a de facto Russian protectorate; five years later, in<br />
1873, they defeated in a similar manner the khan of Khiva, annexing<br />
much of his territory, and leaving the rest as a protectorate; and by 1876<br />
they did away with the khanate of Khoqand altogether, annexing all of<br />
its remaining area.Only the territory roughly corresponding to modern<br />
Turkmenistan remained untouched, but its turn came five years later
Russian conquest and rule 199<br />
when the Russians crushed Turkmen resistance at the battle of Göktepe<br />
in 1881.<br />
The causes and goals of all these campaigns and conquests were<br />
complex and shifting, but two catalysts can be singled out: one was the<br />
unrealistic attempts by the local leaders, both secular and religious, to<br />
recover from the infidels what had been lost, thus provoking the Russians<br />
to actions they might not have taken so quickly (this was especially true<br />
of Bukhara); the other was the virtual collapse of government in the<br />
khanate of Khoqand, which began with the death of Madali Khan in<br />
1842 and worsened in the 1850s and 1860s; the Russians, for several<br />
years endeavoring to establish a working relationship with a khan in<br />
Khoqand, finally threw up their hands and carried out the annexation.<br />
Yet another factor may have been the contradictory effect of the setback<br />
that Russia had suffered in the Crimean War: many Russians, especially<br />
the more fiery members of the military, sought psychological compensation<br />
through expansion elsewhere; in Central Asia this meant taking<br />
solace through thwarting the real or imagined designs of the world’s<br />
principal colonial power and Russia’s adversary, Great Britain.And<br />
finally there was of course the colonial motivation: to gain markets for<br />
the products of Russia’s growing industry and acquire sources of raw<br />
materials for this industry.<br />
The Russian conquest of Central Asia was completed by 1884 with<br />
the acquisition of Merv.This fertile oasis contained the ruins of the<br />
great pre-Islamic and early Islamic city, as well as a small settlement<br />
nearby which had the same name.However, it was not Merv’s history<br />
but its proximity to Afghanistan and thus to British India that made the<br />
event of 1884 so important.Its fall to Russia and the subsequent Russian<br />
drive still farther south to Kushka on the Afghan border brought British<br />
fears for their colony to the verge of paranoia, and the mutual sparring<br />
of the two powers came close to war when in the early 1890s the<br />
Russians pushed south from their province of Fergana through the<br />
Pamirs to India’s Kashmir border.Peace was rescued perhaps mainly<br />
because neither power had the intentions that the other had suspected,<br />
a circumstance that facilitated the work of the Pamir Boundary<br />
Commission in 1895.Its agreement, further strengthened by the 1907<br />
Anglo-Russian Convention, bound the two partners to respect each<br />
other’s zones of interest, and as both a symbol and effective buffer it<br />
created an elongated strip of territory between Pamir and Kashmir and<br />
attached it to Afghanistan (the “Afghan finger”), while linking up its<br />
eastern tip with China’s Sinkiang province.
200 A history of Inner Asia<br />
We may thus consider the year 1895 as the terminus by which the<br />
southern borders of Russian and then Soviet Central Asia – and now of<br />
the independent republics of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and Tajikistan<br />
– had taken their definitive form.Russia’s acquisition of a new, non-<br />
Russian, non-Slavic, non-Christian, Muslim territory of course had<br />
precedents bracketed by Ivan the Terrible’s destruction of the khanates<br />
of Kazan in 1552, Astrakhan in 1556, and Catherine the Great’s annexation<br />
of the khanate of Crimea in 1783.Those conquests, however, were<br />
not quite of the modern colonial type but had elements akin both to<br />
Spain’s Reconquista and Russia’s spread into the Siberian expanse; the<br />
conquest of Central Asia, on the other hand, bore all the hallmarks of<br />
nineteenth-century Europe’s colonial expansion: the motivation of<br />
acquiring abundant and cheap sources of raw materials such as cotton<br />
for the Russian textile industry, and, inversely, of gaining a privileged<br />
position for Russia’s commerce; the ease and rapidity of military operations<br />
in which handfuls of disciplined and well-armed troops of a<br />
modern European power overcame much larger native forces, and the<br />
resulting pacification and organization of the conquered territories<br />
along pragmatic lines so as to suit primarily the colonizer but also, up<br />
to a point, to benefit the colonized, were the chief elements of this<br />
expansion.<br />
British India is the colony that is routinely mentioned as the antecedent,<br />
model, or counterpart to Russian Central Asia, but French North<br />
Africa presents an even closer parallel (although the initially tentative<br />
and protracted invasion of the Indian subcontinent does harbor certain<br />
analogies with Russia’s initial probing of Kazakhstan).Chronologically,<br />
the French conquests bracket the Russian ones – Algeria in 1830,<br />
Tunisia in 1883, Morocco in 1912 – in contrast to the eighteenthcentury<br />
inception of Britain’s drive.Both the French and Russian conquests<br />
were government undertakings from the start, unlike the British<br />
arrival in India, which was at first a private enterprise of the East India<br />
Company; all three acquisitions were vast expanses of territory, but<br />
sizable colonization by settlers – both agricultural and urban – from the<br />
colonial powers occurred only in Central Asia and North Africa; finally,<br />
geographical realities must have been a powerful psychological as well<br />
as logistical factor: the contiguousness of Central Asia with Russia’s own<br />
territories, and the relative proximity of North Africa to France, may<br />
have played a similar catalytic role in the evolving concept of those<br />
countries as indivisible parts of the fatherland, in contrast to India,<br />
whose remoteness beyond two oceans, a population vastly surpassing
Russian conquest and rule 201<br />
that of Britain, and a civilization too impressive to subordinate it to that<br />
of the conqueror, deterred any such contemplations.<br />
The administrative structure devised by St.Petersburg for its new possessions<br />
went through several stages and modifications.The stages were<br />
the fall of Tashkent in 1865, the defeat and truncation of the emirate of<br />
Bukhara in 1868 and of the khanate of Khiva in 1873, the liquidation of<br />
the khanate of Khoqand in 1876, and the completion of the overall conquest<br />
with the fall of Merv in 1884 and penetration of the Pamirs by 1895.<br />
The result was the Governorate-General of Turkestan (Turkestanskoe<br />
General-Gubernatorstvo or General-Guberniya Turkestan), administered<br />
by a military governor residing in Tashkent and divided into five<br />
regions (oblasts) and two protectorates.The regions were Syrdarya (center<br />
Tashkent), Semireche (center Vernyi), Fergana (center Skobelev),<br />
Samarkand (center Samarkand), and Zakaspie (Transcaspia, center<br />
Ashgabad); the protectorates were the emirate of Bukhara and the<br />
khanate of Khiva.<br />
Meanwhile, the organization of the steppes to the north – thus of the<br />
greater part of Kazakhstan – proceeded along lines that were somewhat<br />
distinct without, however, denying the many-faceted links with<br />
Turkestan.The distinctiveness resided, among other things, in their geographical<br />
and historical linkage with Russia proper and with Siberia.<br />
The result was that unlike the Governorate-General of Turkestan,<br />
which had a specific administrative and geographical unity, the territory<br />
inhabited by the Kazakhs consisted of three separate parts: the westernmost<br />
part, whose area corresponded to that of the Bükey and Lesser<br />
Hordes, was now the oblast of Uralsk, whose administrative center was<br />
the city of Uralsk and whose governor reported directly to the Ministry<br />
of Interior; its central part, more or less the former Middle Horde, consisted<br />
of the oblasts of Turgai and Akmolinsk; the governor of the<br />
Turgai oblast did not even reside there, but rather across the border in<br />
Orenburg, for he was at the same time governor of the Governorate-<br />
General of Orenburg and also reported to the Ministry of Interior; the<br />
oblasts of Akmolinsk and Semipalatinsk, on the other hand, formed a<br />
full-fledged Governorate-General, that of the Steppe, but their governor<br />
did not reside there either but across the border in the Siberian city of<br />
Omsk, which is thus also included in this governorate on some maps.<br />
The Semipalatinsk oblast covered some of the territory of the defunct<br />
Greater Horde, but the greater part of the latter now corresponded to<br />
the Turkestan oblast of Semireche and the eastern fringe of that of<br />
Syrdarya, both within the Governorate-General of Turkestan.
202 A history of Inner Asia<br />
One final comment on the administrative borders of Central Asia:<br />
both the khanate of Khiva and the emirate of Bukhara lost important<br />
segments of their territories: those of Khiva were incorporated in the<br />
Syrdarya region, those of Bukhara in that of Samarkand, together with<br />
the precious city itself.On the other hand, the emirate’s territory was<br />
extended farther east so as to include almost all of modern Tajikistan<br />
except eastern Badakhshan, which was incorporated in the Fergana<br />
region, and Khujand, which was divided between the Fergana and<br />
Samarkand regions.<br />
The new political map of Central Asia thus reflected a blend of geographical,<br />
historical, and strategic factors used or created by the Russian<br />
conqueror.The native population played little or no active part in this<br />
process, which only marginally took account of a reality that in the<br />
Soviet period would play a paramount role, namely the ethnolinguistic<br />
one.Yet the life of the natives was immediately and increasingly affected<br />
by the new order.The break with the past brought about many radical<br />
departures, but two deserve special mention: the relative peace and<br />
order installed by the European conqueror in an area where internecine<br />
warfare and marauding had been endemic, and the surrender of the<br />
population’s overall destiny to the discretion of a new and alien master<br />
who was an infidel.<br />
Tashkent became the seat of the Russian governor and administration.The<br />
choice made sense on several counts.Its climate is salubrious<br />
and, although continental, without the extremes characteristic of places<br />
farther north or south; its location, at first sight somewhat eccentric, was<br />
quite central within the province of Turkestan; situated near the right<br />
bank of the Syr Darya, it also lay in an area where the worlds of historic<br />
Transoxania to the south and of the Kipchak steppe to the north met<br />
and overlapped; on the ethnolinguistic level, this was reflected in the Sart<br />
population of the city, which spoke Turki Turkic or Tajik Persian, and<br />
the Kazakh population of the countryside, which spoke Kipchak Turkic;<br />
this overlapping was also visible in the historic role of Tashkent as one<br />
of the crossroads of long-distance trade routes.The fact that its prominence<br />
had previously never equalled that of Bukhara or Samarkand<br />
may similarly be ascribed to this position in a transition zone: for<br />
although Tashkent benefited from the contact with the steppe nomads,<br />
it was also too exposed to their unpredictable incursions and tribal movements,<br />
and to occasional contests between the rulers of Transoxania and<br />
the Kazakhs and other nomads, to become a major metropolis.Once<br />
peace was solidly established by Russia, however, Tashkent quickly sur-
Russian conquest and rule 203<br />
passed all other Central Asian cities.Much of this rise was of course due<br />
to the city’s function as the first modern capital of Central Asia and seat<br />
of the colonial administration.The Russians built a quarter of their own<br />
alongside the native city, establishing a pattern that they would follow in<br />
a number of other places: a European city developed through a rational<br />
system of urban planning, presenting a sharp contrast to the traditional<br />
native quarters.<br />
The second governor of the Turkestan Governorate-General was<br />
Konstantin Petrovich von Kaufman, a general descended from a<br />
Russified German Baltic family who had commanded the Russian<br />
troops in the crucial confrontation with Bukhara.He was an able officer<br />
and administrator, and his long tenure of office (1867–82) did much to<br />
put the colonial administration of Central Asia on a solid base.The<br />
system held firm until the entire edifice of the Russian empire collapsed<br />
in the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917.The prime motivation of the<br />
Russian conquest had been economic self-interest, and the evolution of<br />
the colony between 1868 and 1917 amply met that goal.The area<br />
became a supplier of raw materials for Russian industry and a consumer<br />
of Russian products, after the classical colonial pattern.We have already<br />
pointed to cotton as the most important commodity sent to Russia; its<br />
cultivation increased to the verge of becoming a monoculture, and the<br />
adverse effect of this one-sidedness was made worse by the concomitant<br />
decrease in the growing of cereals, which made Central Asia dependent<br />
on wheat imports from Russia.The other major aspect was the aforementioned<br />
colonization by agricultural settlers, mostly Russian and<br />
Ukrainian.This affected primarily Kazakhstan, but also the Semireche<br />
region of Turkestan, including portions of northern Kyrgyzstan.Some<br />
of the most fertile tracts of land were thus seized, with the doubly<br />
harmful effects of expropriating the nomads’ grazing grounds and of<br />
hampering their seasonal movements in search of water and pasture<br />
land (thus a reverse process in comparison with the aforementioned<br />
desedentarization caused by the Mongols).Other forms of immigrant<br />
colonization existed too, and all over the two provinces; they were mostly<br />
of the professional urban type: civil service, transportation and communications,<br />
incipient industry, and modern education, staffed chiefly by<br />
and for the Russians.This arrangement led to the special demographic<br />
physiognomy of some cities where the European population, living in its<br />
own quarters, began to equal or even surpass the native one.Trade with<br />
Russia, formerly passing through the intermediary of Tatar merchants,<br />
was now taken over by the colonizers themselves.To a considerable
204 A history of Inner Asia<br />
extent the natives, essential to the base of the productive process,<br />
remained excluded on the executive and profit-taking level.<br />
On the cultural and spiritual level, the Russians were fairly benevolent<br />
and tolerant colonizers.Although convinced of the superiority of<br />
their own civilization and religion, they had less of the condescending<br />
or downright contemptuous attitude toward the natives characteristic of<br />
most colonizers from Western Europe.Islam, the sharia, waqf, religious<br />
practices and education, and the general way of life were not interfered<br />
with unless in direct conflict with Russia’s interests and with the exception<br />
of slavery, which the Russians suppressed in imitation of similar<br />
measures taken by other colonial powers in their possessions (and not<br />
long after the 1861 suppression of serfdom in Russia).Proselytism by the<br />
Orthodox Church, despite the participating priest’s role at the storming<br />
of Tashkent, received no encouragement from the authorities.This attitude,<br />
however, was a result not only of Russian tolerance, but also of the<br />
changed intellectual and spiritual climate in Europe, and it presented a<br />
sharp contrast to the earlier, sixteenth-century conquest of Kazan,<br />
where forced conversion or expulsion of those who refused to convert,<br />
in addition to other forms of persecution, wrought havoc among the<br />
Tatar population; in the same manner, for example, the effects of the<br />
1830 French landing at Algiers differed from those of the Spanish<br />
Reconquista, despite the participating French bishop’s exuberant exclamation<br />
about Christianity’s return to North Africa.Central Asia’s<br />
natives, having lost their political and economic independence, thus<br />
retained their spiritual freedom, and most remained staunchly Muslim<br />
in their religion, culture, and way of life.This also meant, however, that<br />
the bulk of the population received little of the already vertiginous intellectual<br />
and scientific progress in which Russia had taken part since the<br />
time of Peter the Great.<br />
Aside from the military occupation itself – about 40,000 troops are<br />
estimated to have been stationed in the two provinces, which had a population<br />
of about six million souls and an area of some 1,277,000 square<br />
kilometers (493,000 square miles) – the construction of railroads and of<br />
a telegraph network proved an effective means of controlling the colony.<br />
Especially the railroads facilitated this control and would later play a<br />
crucial role in the preservation of Turkestan as Russia’s possession<br />
during the turbulent years of the Bolshevik Revolution.The first line,<br />
opened to traffic in September 1881, connected the Caspian port of<br />
Uzun Ada – to be shifted in 1894 to Krasnovodsk – with the Turkmen<br />
city of Kizil Arvat; the location of the earliest railroad line in this part
Russian conquest and rule 205<br />
of the colony, conquered last, may at first sight seem surprising, but the<br />
reason was its compatibility with the lively shipping traffic on the<br />
Caspian, linking it both with ports on the northern, Russian side of this<br />
sea and with Baku and thus Russia’s Transcaucasus possessions.By 1898<br />
this line was extended all the way to Tashkent, and in 1906 a line linking<br />
this city to Orenburg and thus to the rest of the empire – for example,<br />
on to Samara, Riazan, Moscow, and St.Petersburg – was completed.<br />
This network had great strategic, economic and psychological<br />
significance, emphasizing a structural feasibility of Central Asia’s incorporation<br />
in the Russian empire that was impossible in the case of the<br />
overseas colonies of other European powers.Moreover, the construction<br />
of a branch from Merv to Kushka on the Afghan border, the southernmost<br />
point in Russian Turkestan and, for that matter, in the entire<br />
Russian empire, was dictated by the aforementioned strategic considerations,<br />
while that from Samarkand to Andijan served primarily economic<br />
interests.Another detail worth mentioning is the fact that this<br />
line, in its sector between Merv and Samarkand, passed through the<br />
emirate of Bukhara but skirted the city itself some twelve kilometers to<br />
the southeast; that was where Kagan or New Bukhara, a railroad station<br />
town populated mainly by Russian administrative personnel, developed<br />
and eventually played a role in the events leading to the collapse of the<br />
native regime.<br />
Starting with General Romanovskiy (1865–67) and ending with<br />
General Kuropatkin (1914–17), eleven men served as governors-general<br />
of Turkestan.Central Asia experienced in the course of these decades<br />
an economic development that benefited, as we have said, the colonizer,<br />
and in certain basic respects harmed the native population, for example<br />
through loss of land to settlers, growth of detrimental monoculture, and<br />
dependence on food imports and finished products from Russia.On the<br />
positive side, the population drew some benefit from the pax Russica<br />
imposed on it by the colonizer, and from the contact with modern civilization<br />
as represented by Russia.True, most Central Asians continued<br />
to live as before; few were those who received education, and such education<br />
as there was continued to be of the traditional type based on the<br />
Koran and the classics of Arabo-Persian culture.<br />
Nevertheless, a minority of Central Asians did become exposed to<br />
modern education.This happened through a variety of channels.One<br />
was a certain number of schools opened by the Russians for the natives,<br />
where teaching was done both in the vernacular and in Russian (the socalled<br />
russko-tuzemnye shkoly or “Russo-native schools”).Another was
206 A history of Inner Asia<br />
modern education propagated by the Muslims themselves; these reformers<br />
were often from other, older parts of the Russian empire, or were<br />
Central Asians who had lived or studied at Russian institutions.One<br />
such reformer, a Crimean Tatar named Ismail Bey Gasprinskiy<br />
(Gaspirali, 1851–1914), founded a movement known as usul-i jadid, “new<br />
method,” because of the new type of education that was its main<br />
purpose.A certain number of jadid schools thus appeared also in the two<br />
provinces.Efforts to enlighten the people took other forms as well, such<br />
as the periodical press (for example the newspaper Terjuman published in<br />
the Crimean city of Bakhchesarai by Gasprinskiy from 1885 to 1914).<br />
Despite its incipient nature and often ephemeral duration, the effect of<br />
this press in forming the small but important group of those Central<br />
Asians who were increasingly aware of a need for modernization was<br />
considerable.Most of these new currents arrived by way of Russia and<br />
thanks to familiarity with the Russian language through which native<br />
intellectuals gained acquaintance with Western culture, but they were at<br />
the same time part of the general awakening to the need for reform that<br />
was gripping many Muslim countries, especially the Ottoman empire.<br />
While Russian cities such as Orenburg or St.Petersburg were where the<br />
select few from Central Asia would usually travel or study, some went to<br />
Istanbul, where they imbibed ideas not only of modernization but also<br />
of modern nationalism, mostly in its adapted forms of pan-Islamism or<br />
pan-Turkism.Abdarrauf Fitrat (1886–1938) thus spent some time in the<br />
Ottoman capital, and after returning to his native Bukhara he became<br />
one of the newly formed group of “Young Bukharans” who, like the<br />
“Young Turks” of the Ottoman empire, strove to reform their society.<br />
Reform became the leading motto of the Young Bukharans toward the<br />
end of the Tsarist period, and it began to surpass the parallel or competing<br />
mottos of pan-Islamism or pan-Turkism.It was no accident that<br />
the most articulate group appeared in Bukhara; in comparison with<br />
areas under direct administration from Tashkent, the emirate’s backwardness<br />
became that much more evident, while its relative independence<br />
may have encouraged the Young Bukharans to consider reform<br />
rather than liberation from Russia as the most urgent goal.Fitrat’s subsequent<br />
career and life epitomize the drama, ultimately tragic, that<br />
unfolded in Central Asia under Tsarist and then Soviet rule.The first act<br />
took place during the final years of the Tsarist regime, when Fitrat wrote<br />
his Munazara (“The Dispute”), a reformist essay urging his compatriots<br />
to awaken to the needs of modern times.Although he eventually<br />
became a major scholar and publisher of Chaghatay Turkic literature,
Russian conquest and rule 207<br />
he wrote the tract in Persian, a detail further stressing the initial reformist<br />
focus of this typically bilingual Bukharan who later became a major<br />
proponent of Turkic cultural renaissance.Politically, his main focus was<br />
reform, and for this reason he and most of his associates were at first not<br />
averse to cooperation and association with Russia.<br />
Both the Russian administration and the emir of Bukhara looked<br />
warily on the various reformist currents in their territories, and never<br />
hesitated to intervene when they felt that the existing order was threatened.The<br />
native conservatives, especially the clerical class, gave support<br />
to the Russians in this matter.The Tsarist regime, however, had a more<br />
dangerous opponent than incipient nationalism to contend with: its own<br />
socialist dissidents, revolutionaries of various hues, whose numbers in<br />
Central Asia were swelling with deportees from Russia.Although mostly<br />
of the intellectual and professional class, these revolutionaries made<br />
rapid headway among the Russian workers and soldiers of the colony,<br />
while they virtually ignored and were ignored by the natives – whether<br />
their peers whom they barely knew or did not trust, or the peasants and<br />
such members of a marginal native working class as there were.This was<br />
a fateful evolution for Central Asia, for the drive, political skill and, eventually,<br />
the military means of these revolutionaries would in due course<br />
preserve the region as a Russian possession, thwarting the valiantly<br />
defended aspirations of the inexperienced and unarmed Muslims.<br />
On the eve of the First World War and the upheavals that followed it,<br />
the two provinces of Central Asia were thus firmly incorporated in the<br />
Russian empire.The few native uprisings, usually fomented by such<br />
religious figures as the Naqshbandi ishon Madali (better remembered as<br />
Dukchi Ishon) of Fergana in 1898, were speedily put down by the<br />
Russians.Half a century of colonial rule had had effects not unlike those<br />
in other European colonies.Their possession flattered the Russians<br />
psychologically and benefited them economically; but perhaps the<br />
strongest and seemingly indissoluble tie was the presence of a by then<br />
quite entrenched Russian constituency, consisting of people of many<br />
walks of life, from professionals to workers and agriculturalists, who considered<br />
the colony their home and indeed had no other home elsewhere;<br />
again, the analogy with French settlers in North Africa is especially striking.Meanwhile,<br />
the native Muslim population, from the Kazakhs in the<br />
far north to the Turkmens and Tajiks in the deep south, had undergone<br />
a process that was as new, complex, uneven, and contradictory as the<br />
entire concept of a modern colony.Neither the colonizer nor perhaps<br />
even the colonized fully realized how temporary the arrangement was,
208 A history of Inner Asia<br />
in which again we can observe an analogy with other colonies, but especially<br />
with North Africa.The fact remains that by 1917, there had arisen<br />
in both provinces an elite of educated and politically sophisticated<br />
natives who proved themselves capable of putting up a brave fight for<br />
their people’s rights.In the end they lost, but not even the heaviest hand<br />
of alien rule that followed could ultimately change the impermanence<br />
of that rule, as the events of 1991 have shown.
chapter sixteen<br />
From Governorates-General to Union Republics<br />
Among the symptoms of the second-class citizenship that the Muslims<br />
of Central Asia experienced in Tsarist Russia was their official status as<br />
inorodtsy, natives (literally, “alien-born”), and the fact that they were not<br />
required to perform military service.The latter aspect appeared to be an<br />
asset when the First World War broke out and their young men were<br />
spared shedding blood on the battlefields.In 1916, however, the imperial<br />
government took a step whose consequences proved detrimental to<br />
the Russians and disastrous for the natives: it issued a decree that large<br />
numbers of Central Asian Muslims be drafted for labor behind the<br />
battle lines – primarily that of digging trenches.The insulting nature of<br />
this order, compounded by still wilder rumors, provoked a number of<br />
uprisings in both provinces, directed against government representatives<br />
but also against civilians, especially the agricultural settlers.The authorities,<br />
taken by surprise, could not prevent serious casualties on the<br />
Russian side, but when they finally suppressed the revolts, the loss of life<br />
among the natives was staggeringly heavier and the suffering much<br />
worse.Especially hard hit were the Kyrgyz, because their attacks on the<br />
settlers in the neighborhood of the lake Issyk Kul were particularly<br />
violent and the resulting repression was that much harsher.Many fled<br />
across the border to Sinkiang, with further casualties wrought chiefly by<br />
the elements during the winter of 1916–17.<br />
Kuropatkin, the governor-general of the Turkestan province, had the<br />
situation under control and was making plans for further exploitation of<br />
the colony now that more land had been vacated by the fleeing Kyrgyz,<br />
when the empire began to crack at the center.Although the attitude of<br />
the Provisional Government led by Kerenskiy after the February 1917<br />
revolution was at best ambiguous with respect to Central Asian<br />
Muslims, the change did give the latter certain liberties they had not<br />
enjoyed before: they could form their own organizations, freely publish<br />
209
210 A history of Inner Asia<br />
newspapers, and make demands.Thus on 4–8 April 1 the first congress<br />
of Turkestanian Muslims was held in Tashkent.It created the Türkistan<br />
Müslüman Merkezi Shurasi (Central Council of Turkestanian Muslims)<br />
and elected Mustafa Chokay as its president.On 8 April 1917 it passed<br />
the following resolution:<br />
We, the Muslims of Turkestan, who after a subjugation of many years by Tsarist<br />
Russia find for the first time, thanks to the Revolution and to our struggle against<br />
Tsarist rule, the opportunity to present our demands: We consider it right to<br />
form an organization that will bring out our national voice and solve our main<br />
problems.This organization has the following goals:<br />
1.To represent the interests of the Turkestanians before the Revolutionary<br />
authorities.<br />
2.To prepare the ground for the autonomy of Turkestan.<br />
3.To defend religious rights (the shariat courts, a central administration for<br />
religious affairs).<br />
4.To solve the problem of land tenure.<br />
5.To further the cultural development of Turkestan.<br />
6.To examine all the laws that affect the Muslims of Turkestan.<br />
The organization is called The Central Islamic Council of Turkestan.We<br />
want to emphasize that it does not have the function of a political party but has<br />
as its aim the unification of all the patriots of Turkestan concerned about the<br />
welfare of their fatherland.<br />
The organization consisted of two wings: a conservative one led by<br />
Shir Ali Lapin, and a reformist one led by Münevver Qari.The conservatives<br />
then formed an organization of their own, the Ulema Jemiyeti<br />
(Association of the Ulema), and the reformists the Shura-yi Islam (Islamic<br />
Council).The statements and demands of the Central Islamic Council,<br />
addressed to no one in particular but implicitly to the Russian authorities<br />
in Tashkent and Petrograd, received little practical response from<br />
those quarters.The new contest for Turkestan between Muslims and<br />
Russians was only beginning.<br />
It was the second Russian revolution of 1917, the Bolshevik one of<br />
October/November, that seemed to promise true liberation, for selfdetermination<br />
of all the subject peoples of the former Tsarist empire<br />
was one of its professed goals.This was explicitly stated in two proclamations<br />
which the new government, the Council of People’s<br />
1 The question of exact dates for this period is troublesome because the Russian empire still used<br />
the Julian calendar, and a switch to the Gregorian system occurred only after the<br />
October/November Revolution.This has produced occasional inconsistencies in secondary<br />
sources, and I have made no attempt to ascertain whether specific dates had been “converted”<br />
or not.
From Governorates-General to Union Republics 211<br />
Commissars, issued on 2 and 20 November 1917 respectively.The first<br />
proclamation was of a general nature and concerned all the non-<br />
Russian nationalities of Russia; the second proclamation addressed itself<br />
specifically to the Muslims, and read: 2<br />
To All Muslim Workers of Russia and the Orient<br />
Comrades! Brothers!<br />
Great events are taking place in Russia.A bloody war that had been started for<br />
the sake of dividing up of foreign lands is drawing to a close.The rule of predators<br />
who had subjugated the nations of the world is collapsing.The old edifice<br />
of thraldom and serfdom is falling under the blows of the Russian revolution.<br />
The world of arbitrariness and oppression is living its last days.A new world,<br />
the world of workers who have liberated themselves, is being born.At the forefront<br />
of this world is the Workers’ and Peasants’ Government of Russia – the<br />
Council of People’s Commissars.<br />
All Russia is studded with Revolutionary Councils of Workers’, Soldiers’, and<br />
Peasants’ deputies.Power is in the hands of the people.The toiling masses of<br />
Russia speak with one voice about their wish to conclude an honest peace and<br />
to help the oppressed peoples of the world attain freedom.<br />
...In the face of these great events we are turning to you, the toiling and disinherited<br />
Muslims of Russia and the Orient.<br />
Muslims of Russia, Tatars of the Volga and the Crimea, Kyrgyz and Sarts of<br />
Siberia and Turkestan, Turks and Tatars of Transcaucasia, Chechens and<br />
mountain dwellers of the Caucasus, all you whose mosques and places of<br />
worship have been destroyed, whose beliefs and customs have been trampled<br />
on by the tsars and oppressors of Russia! From now on your beliefs and customs,<br />
your national and cultural institutions are being declared free and inviolable.<br />
Arrange your national life freely and without hindrance.This is your right.<br />
Know that your rights, just as the rights of all the peoples of Russia, are protected<br />
by the might of the Revolution and by its organs, the Councils of<br />
Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’ Deputies.Support then this Revolution and<br />
its executive organ, the Government!<br />
...Muslims of Russia! Muslims of the Orient! We expect your sympathy and<br />
support on this path toward a rebirth of the world!<br />
Signed: V.Ulyanov (Lenin), Chairman of the Council of Commissars; J.<br />
Dzhugashvili (Stalin), Commissar for Nationality Affairs.<br />
The Bolshevik Revolution was replicated in Tashkent a few days after<br />
the events in Petrograd, and on 15 November 1917 the Third Regional<br />
Congress of the Soviets proclaimed the authority of the new regime over<br />
2 B.Hayit, Sowjetrussische Orientpolitik am Beispiel Turkestans (Köln-Berlin, 1962), pp.217–18.The<br />
author cites two Soviet publications as the sources for the original Russian text: Sobranie ukazov rasporyazheniy<br />
raboche-krestyanskogo pravitelstva (Moscow, 1917–18), vol.19 (Dec.1917), no.7, appendix<br />
2; and Narodnyi komissariat po delam natsionalnostey, Politika sovetskoy vlasti po natsionalnym delam<br />
za tri goda, 1917–1920 (Moscow, 1920).
212 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Central Asia.This authority was to be expressed by the local government,<br />
the Turkestan Council of People’s Commissars (Turkestanskiy<br />
Sovet Narodnykh Komissarov, usually shortened as Turksovnarkom).<br />
Concurrently with this congress, the Third Congress of Central Asian<br />
Muslims was meeting in Tashkent.Some of the participants demanded<br />
autonomy, but Shir Ali Lapin, who had presided over the conference,<br />
proposed to the Soviets that a Russian–Turkestanian coalition government<br />
be formed.These demands and proposals were rejected, and F.I.<br />
Kolesov, the chairman of the Turksovnarkom, issued the following<br />
statement:<br />
At the present time we cannot permit the admission of Muslims into the higher<br />
organs of the regional revolutionary authority, because the attitude of the<br />
native population toward the Soviet of Workers’, Soldiers’, and Peasants’<br />
Deputies is quite uncertain, and because the indigenous population lacks proletarian<br />
organizations which the [Bolshevik] faction could welcome into the<br />
organs of the higher government.<br />
These events preceded by a few days the proclamation of the central<br />
government in Petrograd to the Muslims of Russia.Subsequent developments<br />
proved that it would be the spirit of the Tashkent statement,<br />
not that of the Petrograd proclamation, which would always determine<br />
the Soviet government’s treatment of the Muslims of Russia.It is true,<br />
however, that the contradiction between the two attitudes was glossed<br />
over by a wording in the Petrograd proclamation that had far-reaching<br />
consequences: the appeal was addressed to all the workers (trudyashchiesya,<br />
perhaps more accurately translated as toilers) of the Muslim<br />
world, thus to its proletariat in Marxist terminology.Although it reiterated<br />
the right of nations to self-determination, its implicit exclusion of<br />
the bourgeoisie gave the Soviet regime a tactical advantage which it subsequently<br />
used to perfection: for in Central Asia – just as in other Muslim<br />
countries of the time – there was no native industrial working class, and<br />
most indigenous leaders came from the bourgeoisie or from the religious<br />
establishment.<br />
Another significant feature of the Petrograd proclamation was its universality:<br />
it addressed itself to all Muslims, not just to those under<br />
Russian rule.It revealed how totally subordinated Central Asia was to<br />
the concept of a world revolution, and how automatic was the assumption<br />
that the men who now held power in Russia should be accepted as<br />
the unquestioned leaders of that revolution.To them, Turkestan was<br />
more a stepping stone than an area whose problems and wishes might<br />
be met for their own sake.Its role as an important pawn in a gigantic
From Governorates-General to Union Republics 213<br />
and deadly serious game came out quite clearly in a statement made by<br />
Stalin in 1919: “Turkestan, because of its geographical position, is a<br />
bridge connecting socialist Russia with the oppressed countries of the<br />
East, and in view of this the strengthening of the Soviet regime in<br />
Turkestan might have the greatest revolutionary significance for the<br />
entire Orient.” This was the global view at the center of Communist<br />
power in Moscow (where it had moved from Petrograd), but there can<br />
be little doubt that it was not exempt from other considerations: the principal<br />
one being the psychologically natural tendency of those with<br />
power to force their views and wishes on those under their control, and<br />
the tendency to retain what has once been acquired.Moreover, the<br />
national pride in Russia’s status as a great empire, although camouflaged<br />
behind thick layers of contradictory Marxist denials, may have played<br />
an important psychological role at all levels of Russian society, from<br />
humble Russian citizens to such aliens as Stalin once they had crossed<br />
the national divide to join or become the masters of this empire.Stalin<br />
was at the time the Commissar for Nationality Affairs, and subsequently<br />
he never ceased paying attention to the question of non-Russian nationalities<br />
of the Soviet Union even after the Narkomnats (short for Narodnyi<br />
Komissariat Natsionalnostey) had been abolished and he himself had<br />
become the most powerful man in Russia.With Stalin’s rising power, the<br />
initially feasible debate of how seriously the right to self-determination<br />
should be taken was closed; only those with impeccable credentials had<br />
this right, and the foremost component of these credentials was<br />
unflinching loyalty to Moscow.<br />
the khoqand experiment<br />
At the inception of their rule in November 1917, the Bolsheviks of<br />
Tashkent hastened to establish firm ties with the government in<br />
Petrograd, and on 23 November they sent the following telegram: “The<br />
Sovnarkom considers the execution of your decrees to be its duty.” The<br />
Sovnarkom and the Soviets – a rudimentary form of government and<br />
parliament – in Tashkent may have propagated revolutionary, progressive<br />
ideas, but they also represented almost exclusively the Russian and<br />
European minority in Turkestan.We have mentioned the attempt of<br />
Shir Ali Lapin to negotiate with the Russians to obtain a share in power.<br />
After the rebuttal by Kolesov, Muslim leaders decided to convoke a<br />
fourth congress in order to seek a solution.In December 1917 they thus<br />
met in Khoqand, which at the time remained outside the administrative
214 A history of Inner Asia<br />
and military reach of revolutionary Tashkent.This congress was<br />
marked not only by an alliance of the conservative Ulema Jemiyeti with<br />
the progressive Shura-yi Islam, but also by the participation of non-<br />
Muslims brought there by their anti-Bolshevik sentiments.<br />
The congress elected a parliament, Khalq Shurasi (People’s Council;<br />
the word shura is a translation of the Russian sovet, “advice, council,”<br />
usually spelled in English as soviet), which consisted of fifty-four<br />
members: thirty-six of these were Muslims, while eighteen were<br />
Russians or other non-Muslims.Shir Ali Lapin became president of this<br />
parliament, which on 11 December 1917 nominated a committee of ten<br />
members that was meant to function as a provisional government.This<br />
parliament and government claimed to represent a territory and population<br />
identical with those claimed by the Soviet power in Tashkent:<br />
1,524,000 square kilometers and 5,363,000 inhabitants.The following<br />
resolution was adopted by the congress:<br />
The Fourth Extraordinary Congress, expressing the will of the peoples of<br />
Turkestan to self-determination in accordance with the principles proclaimed<br />
by the Great Russian Revolution, declares Turkestan territory autonomous in<br />
union with the Federal Democratic Republic of Russia.The elaboration of the<br />
form of autonomy of Turkestan is entrusted to the Constituent Assembly of<br />
Turkestan, which must be convened as soon as possible.The Congress solemnly<br />
pledges herewith that the rights of national minorities will be fully safeguarded.<br />
There thus developed in Turkestan a historic confrontation, from<br />
December 1917 to February 1918, between the predominantly Muslim<br />
regional government in Khoqand and the predominantly Russian one<br />
in Tashkent.In terms of national self-determination, the former could<br />
claim to be the more legitimate body; in the eyes of the Bolsheviks,<br />
however, it was a bourgeois government that had to be eliminated: for<br />
them, there was no compromise between the two, but the Muslims of<br />
Khoqand had not yet fully grasped to which side of the contradiction<br />
the central authorities in Moscow were leaning when in January 1918<br />
the Khalq Shurasi made an indirect appeal to the Bolshevik government<br />
that it honor its professed commitment to national self-determination.<br />
As People’s Commissar for Nationality Affairs, Stalin sent a sarcastic<br />
reply to the appeal from Khoqand that the Tashkent Soviet be dissolved:<br />
The [Tashkent] Soviets are autonomous in their internal affairs and they discharge<br />
their duties by depending upon their actual resources.The native proletariat<br />
of Turkestan, therefore, should not appeal to the Central Soviet Power<br />
with the request to dissolve the Turkestan Sovnarkom, which in their opinion is<br />
depending upon the non-Muslim army elements, but should themselves dissolve<br />
it by force, if such force is available to the native proletariat and peasants.
From Governorates-General to Union Republics 215<br />
Stalin of course knew that the only real force in Turkestan was the<br />
military force held by the Russians, and that there could be but one<br />
outcome from a confrontation between Tashkent and Khoqand.It was,<br />
in the last analysis, a confrontation between Moscow and Khoqand,<br />
except that the incipient civil war at first prevented direct intervention<br />
from the center.Even under those circumstances, the Muslims proved<br />
no match for the Russians of Tashkent: the government of Khoqand<br />
had virtually no army, little administrative apparatus, and negligible<br />
financial resources.The Tashkent government sent a small expeditionary<br />
corps that stormed Khoqand on 22 February 1918, arrested those<br />
members of the parliament who had not fled, and established Soviet rule<br />
in Fergana.<br />
alash orda and kyrgyz (i.e. kazakh) autonomous soviet<br />
socialist republic (kazssr)<br />
While the Muslims of the defunct Governorate-General of Turkestan<br />
were endeavoring to gain recognition of their rights first in Tashkent and<br />
then, having failed there, through the Khoqand experiment, the<br />
Kazakhs of the Governorate-General of the Steppe and of the other<br />
two provinces, Turgai and Uralsk, were making similar efforts on their<br />
part.These efforts crystallized in the formation of a movement that<br />
received the name “Alash Orda” after a traditional battle cry (“Alash!”)<br />
of Kazakh nomads.The movement had at first a structure similar to that<br />
of various patriotic groups, but after its first general convention at<br />
Orenburg in July and August 1917, it assumed the role of the leading<br />
national party.By December 1917 this party formed a Kazakh government<br />
which then pleaded with Moscow for recognition in a manner<br />
similar to that of the slightly later but much briefer Khoqand government.It<br />
ultimately failed, and the reasons were again similar: with no<br />
real army at its disposal, and meager financial resources, it was no match<br />
for the Bolsheviks, who were determined to eliminate any rival to their<br />
power.As a national government controlling a sizable portion of<br />
Kazakh territory, the Alash Orda hardly even existed; as a movement,<br />
on the other hand, it managed to persist until March 1920 when the<br />
Kyrgyz (i.e. Kazakh) Revolutionary Committee (a body controlled by<br />
Russian Bolsheviks), after the definitive Red victory over the Whites,<br />
ordered its dissolution.<br />
By then Moscow had its own plan for Kazakhstan and quickly proceeded<br />
to implement it.On 26 August 1920 Lenin and Kalinin signed<br />
a decree “On the creation of the Kyrgyz Autonomous Soviet Socialist
216 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Republic.” This became a reality in October of that year, when the<br />
Founding Convention of the Kazak Soviets gathered in Orenburg, and<br />
the Kyrgyz (i.e. Kazakh) Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic was<br />
born.In some respects, the process and the results in Kazakhstan were<br />
analogous to those in Turkestan, where the Turkestan Autonomous<br />
Soviet Socialist Republic came into being at about the same time; in one<br />
special sense, however, the formation of the Kazakh ASSR was ahead<br />
of the rest of Central Asia, for unlike that of the Turkestan ASSR, it was<br />
based on the ethnolinguistic factor of a native nationality, the Kazakhs.<br />
This factor became the principle that in 1924 would lead to the formation<br />
of the other four republics of Central Asia, Uzbekistan,<br />
Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan and Tajikistan.<br />
turkestan autonomous soviet socialist republic<br />
(tassr)<br />
As we have seen, after the failure of the Khoqand experiment in<br />
February 1918, the Soviets of Tashkent were the only organized authority<br />
on the territory of Turkestan except for the still existing emirate of<br />
Bukhara and khanate of Khiva.Russian rule was on the whole secure,<br />
but distance from central Russia and temporary separation from it by the<br />
civil war did create certain special circumstances.One was that for a<br />
little longer, not only the Bolsheviks but also other Russian political factions<br />
had some share in power.Thus at the Fifth Congress of the Soviets<br />
of Turkestan, held in Tashkent in April 1918, from among the 263 delegates<br />
only 86 were Bolsheviks; the next strongest faction, the SRs<br />
(Socialist Revolutionaries), had 70 members, and there were minor<br />
groups; the 87 non-affiliated delegates (bezpartiynye) even outnumbered<br />
the Bolsheviks.It was only a matter of time before the latter would eliminate<br />
all the other parties and would assign the non-affiliates their permanently<br />
subordinate role, but the situation, even though temporary,<br />
had some significance for the Muslims.<br />
With all their ruthless suppression of any Muslim attempts at genuine<br />
autonomy, the Bolsheviks did try, albeit inconsistently, to put an end to<br />
the mistreatment of the natives by the Russians, and they also began to<br />
recruit those Muslims whose class credentials made them worthier candidates<br />
for a share in power.Thus when a new Sovnarkom was<br />
appointed by the Congress, four out of the sixteen members of this<br />
regional government presided over by F.A.Kobozev were Muslims, as<br />
were ten out of the thirty-six members of the Central Executive
From Governorates-General to Union Republics 217<br />
Committee (Tsentralnyi Ispolnitelnyi Komitet, usually abbreviated as<br />
TsIK or Ispolkom) elected by the Congress.The effort by Tashkent<br />
Bolsheviks to attract natives to their political process was a result of pressure<br />
from Moscow; left to themselves, they tended to display the same<br />
attitude as that of the other Russians of Turkestan: to maintain a fundamental<br />
separation between the rulers and the ruled, and to favor the<br />
strengthening of the Russian and European element at all levels.This<br />
attitude sometimes assumed even ideological, Marxist forms.Thus<br />
Tobolin, a prominent Bolshevik member of the Tashkent Sovnarkom,<br />
said in 1918: “From the Marxists’ point of view, the Kyrgyz are weak.<br />
They have to die out anyway, so it is more important that the Revolution<br />
spend its resources on fighting its enemies on the front than on fighting<br />
the famine.”<br />
The famine that plagued Turkestan and Kazakhstan in those years,<br />
especially during the harsh winter of 1918 and 1919, hit the natives<br />
much harder than the Europeans, and the vast numbers of Muslim casualties<br />
were not altogether unwelcome: they could be replaced by<br />
Russian settlers.Estimates of how many natives died vary between one<br />
and three million people.G.Safarov, a Communist functionary in<br />
Semireche, stated at the Tenth Congress of the Russian Communist<br />
Party in 1921 that “since the establishment of Soviet power, Russian<br />
land ownership has increased in the Semireche province from 35% to<br />
70%, while the number of the Kyrgyz who have perished is estimated at<br />
35.5%.”<br />
Satisfaction with these developments seems to have been shared by<br />
some Bolshevik leaders in Moscow as well.G.L.Pyatakov wrote in 1921<br />
that some two million (native) people had perished in Turkestan, and<br />
that plans had been made to carry out a transfer of one-and-a-half<br />
million Russians to the vacated lands and houses.<br />
Nevertheless, the more ideologically attuned Bolshevik leadership in<br />
Moscow became concerned that this mistreatment of Turkestanian<br />
Muslims might compromise the plans for Central Asia as a stepping<br />
stone toward a revolution in the entire colonial world.Between 1918 and<br />
1920 a contest thus developed between the Communist leaders at the<br />
center and the local ones in Tashkent.The Tashkent Soviets were aware<br />
that in the long run they would need Moscow’s support to keep<br />
Turkestan Russian, but at the same time they demanded a great deal of<br />
autonomy for their way of running the province.Moscow eventually<br />
prevailed and forced the local group to treat the natives better and start<br />
a recruitment drive among them.At the same time, another contest
218 A history of Inner Asia<br />
began to take shape between Moscow and those Turkestanian Muslims<br />
who were joining the Communist Party while trying to retain their own<br />
views and goals as to the future of their country.Here too Moscow would<br />
emerge victorious.Both these parallel and rather contradictory contests<br />
marked the history of the Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist<br />
Republic (TASSR).<br />
The TASSR was established on 30 April 1918 at the end of the Fifth<br />
Regional Congress of the Soviets of Turkestan.In this the Tashkent<br />
communists followed the instructions brought from Moscow by P.A.<br />
Kobozev, who then became chairman of the aforementioned Central<br />
Executive Committee (TsIK).For almost a year, instructions that native<br />
leaders should be recruited into the Party, government and even army<br />
were ignored, because the civil war that separated Turkestan from<br />
Russia made that type of insubordination possible.The best that the<br />
Muslim leaders could do in the harsh winter of 1918/19 was to organize<br />
actions to alleviate the plight of their co-religionists who were dying<br />
of hunger.One such young leader was Turar Ryskulov or Riskul-uulu<br />
(1894–1938), a Kazakh or Kyrgyz from the Kazakh–Kyrgyz border<br />
area.<br />
By the spring of 1919 the civil war had subsided, and Moscow began<br />
to act more decisively in Turkestan.A special commission, the<br />
Turkestanskaya Chrezvychaynaya Komissiya (Turkkomissiya) was sent<br />
to directly supervise the local Sovnarkom.Although only one of its<br />
members, Kobozev, managed to reach Tashkent at the time, the measures<br />
which he and his staff began to carry out brought important results.<br />
One of these was the formation, in April 1919, of a Muslim wing of the<br />
Communist Party, the Musulmanskoe byuro (Musbyuro).Soon the ranks<br />
of the party began to swell with such native leaders as T.Ryskulov and<br />
N.Khojaev (also spelled Khodzhaev; not to be confused with Fayzulla<br />
Khojaev, president of the Bukharan People’s Republic).An unusual<br />
feature of this new policy was the neglect of the basic reservations which<br />
the Bolsheviks, whether in Tashkent or elsewhere, always had about the<br />
class identity of native recruits: these new members were genuine<br />
national leaders, and mostly came from the middle or upper classes.In<br />
its drive for korenizatsiya, a word which could be translated as “nativization,”<br />
Moscow seemed to forget its own caveats and soon had to contend<br />
with a new problem in Turkestan: national communism.<br />
Probably few of these native leaders were genuine converts to<br />
Communism, but they were no conservatives either.Most were<br />
descended from the reformist movement of the jadids, and moderniza-
From Governorates-General to Union Republics 219<br />
tion of Turkestan, social justice, and national liberation were their goals.<br />
The actions of Moscow in 1919 made them believe that they could<br />
reach these goals as national Communists, and this belief was at first<br />
encouraged by Lenin himself.Relations with the Muslims of Russia<br />
seemed to be generally improving.Hostilities between the Bolshevik<br />
government and the Kazakh and Bashkir groups had ceased; the Eighth<br />
Communist Party Congress launched a new drive of attracting Muslims<br />
into the Communist fold; and the government seemed ready to negotiate<br />
with Muslim leaders.The Bashkir Zeki Velidi (Togan) spent prolonged<br />
periods in Moscow, meeting with Lenin, Stalin, and other<br />
Bolsheviks.The question of the future status of Turkestan, Kazakhstan,<br />
Bashqurtistan, Tatarstan and other Muslim regions seemed open, and<br />
to contemporary observers and participants genuine autonomy or even<br />
independence may have seemed possible.<br />
The Russians themselves appear to have been undecided at that time<br />
on one important point: whether Turkestan should become a politicoethnic<br />
unit, or whether it should be divided up into smaller specific units.<br />
In fact, the question even transcended that of Turkestan in the administrative<br />
and political sense: many Muslim leaders viewed all of Central<br />
Asia in the broadest sense as Turkestan, including Kazakhstan,<br />
Bashqurtistan, and Tatarstan.This was implied in the discussions<br />
between Zeki Velidi and Lenin, for the Bashkir leader claimed to speak<br />
for such a comprehensive Turkestan.At the beginning of July 1919,<br />
Lenin asked Zeki Velidi to evaluate a project for the Muslim region that<br />
had been given to him by the Pan-Islamic propagandist Muhammad<br />
Barakatullah; 3 Zeki Velidi submitted instead a project of his own.<br />
According to Zeki Velidi, Lenin liked the proposals and incorporated<br />
most of them – though not all, and this is an important qualification: the<br />
army was one of the exceptions – into the instructions which were<br />
cabled to Tashkent on 12 July 1919.They caused consternation among<br />
the Bolsheviks of Turkestan.Indeed, even with the abovementioned<br />
exception, the new instructions went beyond the policy decided upon by<br />
the Eighth Party Congress and introduced by Kobozev in February of<br />
that year.Nevertheless, Moscow refused to replace the essentially<br />
Russian Red Army with a local one, or to relinquish the key government<br />
posts to Muslims, or to give Muslims a majority on the Turkkomissiya.<br />
Even under these circumstances, Muslim nationalists in their new<br />
3 Muhammad Barakatullah (1859–1927) of Bhopal was one of the most colorful Muslim intellectuals<br />
who left India before the First World War to continue their Pan-Islamic, nationalist, or revolutionary<br />
activities.See J.M.Landau, The Politics of Pan-Islam (Oxford, 1990), pp.195–97.
220 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Communist garb seemed at first within reach of some of their goals.Led<br />
by Turar Ryskulov, they opposed the incipient division of Turkestan into<br />
separate nationalities but advocated a truly autonomous Turkestan<br />
republic that would have its own army, foreign affairs and finances.At<br />
the Fifth Regional Communist Party Congress held in Tashkent in<br />
January 1920, the Muslim members scored the greatest political victory<br />
they would ever attain within the Party framework.On 17 January the<br />
Congress adopted the following resolution:<br />
In the interest of the international unity of workers and oppressed peoples, be<br />
it resolved that we shall oppose by means of communist agitation the strivings<br />
of Turkic nationals to divide themselves into various national groups such as<br />
Tatars, Kyrgyz, Kazakhs, Bashkirs, Uzbeks and others, and to establish small<br />
separate republics.Instead, with a view to forge the solidarity of all Turkic<br />
peoples who so far have not been included within the RSFSR (Russian Soviet<br />
Federative Socialist Republic), it is proposed to unify them within a Turkic<br />
Soviet Republic, and wherever it is not possible to achieve this, it is proposed<br />
to unite different Turkic nationalities in accordance with their territorial<br />
proximity.<br />
The implications of this resolution were far-reaching: while not negating<br />
federal ties with Russia, the Muslim delegates envisioned a Turkic<br />
Soviet Republic of potentially vast size whose chief common denominator<br />
would be its Turkic identity.In addition to this resolution, the<br />
Ryskulov group also demanded a renaming of the Turkestan<br />
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic as the Turkic Republic, and of<br />
the Communist Party of Turkestan as the Communist Party of the<br />
Turkic Peoples; another demand was the dissolution of the<br />
Turkkomissiya on the grounds that it had violated the autonomy of<br />
Turkestan.<br />
The demands of the nationalists may in retrospect appear unrealistic,<br />
but they were the result of a majority vote of the supreme political voice<br />
in the republic, the Communist Party of Turkestan, because that majority<br />
did reflect the ethnic composition of the area.It was at this point that<br />
the crucial factor of the Russian Communist Party, and of the Red<br />
Army, came into play.On 8 March 1920 Moscow gave its clear and decisive<br />
answer: the Communist Party of Turkestan had henceforward to be<br />
a part of the Communist Party of Russia with the status of a regional<br />
branch; there could be no question of a Turkic republic; as for the<br />
TASSR, the commissariats of defence, foreign affairs, railroads,<br />
finances, and postal services had to be under the jurisdiction of their<br />
federal counterparts.
From Governorates-General to Union Republics 221<br />
This was the conclusion of the multidimensional struggle for<br />
Turkestan.In two stages, Moscow first neutralized the insubordinate<br />
Russian elements who had been loath to treat politically acceptable<br />
natives as equals; then, however, it fashioned the future of this former<br />
colony according to its own ideas and wishes, not to those of the<br />
Muslims.Moscow had played its cards well, but in the last analysis it was<br />
the irrefutable argument of having the Red Army at its disposal that<br />
made this victory possible.<br />
the khorezmian and bukharan people’s soviet<br />
republics<br />
The TASSR (Turkestan Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic), created<br />
in March 1920, lasted until October 1924, and in territorial terms it was<br />
a continuation of the Governorate-General of Turkestan.Territorial<br />
continuity also marked, in the same period, the People’s Soviet<br />
Republics of Bukhara and Khorezm (Khwarazm).During the colonial<br />
period, both the emirs of Bukhara and the khans of Khiva had managed<br />
to impose upon their citizens the worst of the two worlds: the small but<br />
energetic groups of young Bukharans and Khivans knew that as Russia’s<br />
vassals, their countries had joined the humiliated and exploited ranks of<br />
colonies; as subjects of semi-medieval autocrats, they themselves were<br />
deprived even of those marginal benefits that Russian colonialism did<br />
bring to the directly administered Governorate-General.The<br />
Revolution of October 1917 and the Bolsheviks’ appeals to the Muslims<br />
of Russia offered them, they thought, a unique opportunity of liberating<br />
their countries both from decadent despotism and from colonialism.<br />
As a result, their conception of the struggle taking shape in Central Asia<br />
as well as their course of action between 1917 and 1920 had a different<br />
slant from those of their fellow Muslims elsewhere in the area.<br />
The reformists at first did not aim at abolishing the two monarchies;<br />
all they wanted was a moderation of the despotism and some degree of<br />
modernization of the institutions and of education.The khan of Khiva<br />
and especially the emir of Bukhara with their conservative entourages<br />
proved tough and stubborn opponents, however.They persistently<br />
refused even these changes, so that the reformists were in the end driven<br />
both logistically and psychologically into the arms of the Russian revolutionaries<br />
as their indispensable allies.Thus while the Bolsheviks of<br />
Tashkent were extinguishing the poignant Khoqand experiment, the<br />
reformists of the two principalities were appealing to them for help in
222 A history of Inner Asia<br />
their struggle for freedom; and in the very same months of 1920, when<br />
Moscow was dashing the hopes of Muslim representatives in Tashkent<br />
for a truly independent republic of Turkestan, the Muslims of Bukhara<br />
saw their only hope in a Russian intervention against the ever more<br />
vicious despotism of the emir, who now thought himself freed from the<br />
restrictions that Tsarist suzerainty had imposed on him.The difficulty of<br />
the task was demonstrated not only by the inability of an indigenous<br />
effort to persuade the emir to accept reform, but also by the failure of<br />
the first military expedition that the Russians had undertaken against<br />
him in March 1920.The second campaign, which took place in<br />
September of that year, was better prepared, and it quickly prevailed.<br />
The emir fled, and the nationalists thought their dreams had come true<br />
when a People’s Soviet Republic of Bukhara was established in October.<br />
Fayzulla Khojaev became prime minister and Abdarrauf Fitrat foreign<br />
minister.Although a few Russians also entered the government, the<br />
republic seemed to be what the patriots of Khoqand and Tashkent had<br />
striven for, an independent Muslim state.A similar process had already<br />
in February 1920 led to the establishment of the People’s Soviet<br />
Republic of Khorezm (the territory’s historic name prevailed over that<br />
of its recent capital, Khiva).<br />
The national delimitation of 1924 put an end to the existence of these<br />
two republics and incorporated their territories into the newly formed<br />
republics of Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Kazakhstan, and Tajikistan.<br />
This measure revealed the illusory nature of the two republics’ independence.Nevertheless,<br />
they did possess what might be called genuine<br />
autonomy, especially in the first two years of their existence, and gave a<br />
convincing demonstration of the vitality and potential that Central<br />
Asian Muslims had to govern themselves.Upon the abolition of the two<br />
republics, some of their leaders such as Khojaev and Fitrat, joined the<br />
political process and intellectual elites of the newly formed republics,<br />
especially Uzbekistan.<br />
national delimitation<br />
In the TASSR, the Muslim leaders had lost their bid for power by March<br />
1920, but they did not surrender forthwith.Undaunted by the fact that<br />
their Russian comrades branded them as “bourgeois nationalists” or<br />
“deviationists,” they took their case directly to Moscow in the hope that<br />
the central authorities would lend them a more sympathetic ear.In May<br />
1920 their delegation, consisting of N.Khojaev, Bek-Ivanov, and T.
From Governorates-General to Union Republics 223<br />
Ryskulov arrived in Moscow, bringing a petition which repeated their<br />
demands and contained complaints about the continuing suffering<br />
inflicted upon the native population by the local authorities and settlers.<br />
At the same time, unbeknown to the Muslim representatives, Sh.Z.<br />
Eliava and Ian E.Rudzutak had also arrived.These were members of<br />
the Turkestan Commission (neither was a Turkestanian; Eliava hailed<br />
from Georgia, Rudzutak from Russia’s Baltic province) who were to give<br />
the central authorities their version of the story.The Politburo examined<br />
the situation on 25 May, and Lenin took a special interest in it.The decision<br />
was announced on 13 July: the Turkestan Commission was<br />
instructed to combat pan-Islamism and pan-Turkism, but also to organize<br />
the preparation of a map that would show the ethnic composition<br />
of Turkestan and to examine the question of whether a fusion (sliyanie)<br />
or delimitation (razmezhevanie; “demarcation” might be a better translation,<br />
but “delimitation” is the standard term used by Sovietologists) was<br />
the preferable solution.Thus began the process that would lead, by<br />
1924, to the transformation of Turkestan into a region of five national<br />
units, early forms of the present republics of Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan,<br />
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.<br />
One of the remarkable features of this process was that after the flurry<br />
of activities in the spring and summer of 1920, it lay dormant until<br />
the beginning of 1924.The two chief reasons for the delay were the<br />
complex situation in Central Asia itself, and the need felt by the<br />
Bolshevik leadership at the center to devise a broader form and name<br />
for their multinational empire than that of Russia; another factor was<br />
the Basmachi movement, a native uprising against the Soviets, the suppression<br />
of which took precedence over other measures in Central Asia.<br />
By the end of 1923 most of those problems had been solved or brought<br />
under control.The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, formed in<br />
December 1922, offered both a fitting frame and name for new states to<br />
join it; the People’s Republics of Bukhara and Khorezm were docile<br />
bodies ready to follow instructions from Moscow, and the Basmachis had<br />
ceased to be a threat.Thus, early in 1924, shortly after Lenin’s death,<br />
Soviet leaders decided that the time had come for reshaping the borders<br />
within Central Asia along ethnolinguistic lines.<br />
The first step was a meeting of the Central Committee of the Russian<br />
Communist Party in Moscow on 31 January 1924, where the decision<br />
was made to carry out a national delimitation (natsionalnoe razmezhevanie)<br />
of Central Asia.The aforementioned I.E.Rudzutak, a member of the<br />
Turkestan Commission, was entrusted with further study of the project.
224 A history of Inner Asia<br />
An essential part of this “further study” was a transmission of the decision<br />
made in Moscow to the Communist Party organs of Central Asia:<br />
thus on 10 March 1924 the Central Committee of the Communist Party<br />
of Turkestan ASSR approved the project of delimitation; similar<br />
approvals were passed by the Party committees of the two People’s<br />
Republics, Bukharan and Khorezmian.The next important step was<br />
again taken in Moscow, when on 11 May the Central Committee’s<br />
Central Asian Bureau decided: (1) that an Uzbek Soviet Socialist<br />
Republic and a Turkmen Soviet Socialist Republic be formed; these two<br />
would then directly (neposredstvenno) enter the framework of the Union of<br />
Soviet Socialist Republics; (2) that a Tajik Autonomous Region (oblast) be<br />
formed; it would then enter the framework of the Uzbek SSR; (3) that a<br />
Kara-Kyrgyz (i.e., Kyrgyz in present terminology) Autonomous Region<br />
be formed, with the question deferred as to which framework it would<br />
enter; and (4) that those Kyrgyz (i.e. Kazakhs in present terminology)<br />
who inhabit the territory of the TASSR enter the framework of the<br />
already formed Kyrgyz (thus Kazakh) Autonomous SSR.<br />
On 12 June 1924 the Central Committee of the Russian Communist<br />
Party accepted this project, and from then on it was primarily a question<br />
of implementation.The Central Territorial Commission and the<br />
Commission on National Delimitation, the two organs in charge of the<br />
project, met the formidable challenges of conducting ethnolinguistic<br />
surveys, distributing economic and financial assets, and checking a<br />
curious emergence of regional nationalism (e.g. Kazakh versus Uzbek:<br />
Tashkent was an Uzbek city, whereas its countryside was Kazakh), all<br />
within the amazingly short time of three months.On 25 September<br />
1924 I.A.Zelenskiy, chairman of the Central Asian Bureau, presented<br />
a report to the Politburo on the final form of the project.The project<br />
was approved, and on 14 October it was the turn of the All-Russian<br />
Central Executive Committee of the Soviets to approve the delimitation<br />
draft; minor modifications were introduced at that point, and the decision<br />
was made that the Kara-Kyrgyz Autonomous Region would enter<br />
the framework of the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.This<br />
ruling was then given the final blessing at the plenary meeting of the<br />
Central Committee of the Russian Communist Party on 26 October<br />
1924.The five republics of Central Asia, two in their definitive form,<br />
three in incipient forms, thus came into being.
chapter seventeen<br />
Soviet Central Asia<br />
We have seen how in October 1924 the Turkic and Iranian Muslims of<br />
Central Asia attained nationhood and statehood through a unique historical<br />
process that was directed from Moscow and in which they themselves<br />
had little active participation.The identification of the languages<br />
and nationalities, their classification, and subsequent national delimitation<br />
resembled more the work of scientists studying animal or vegetable<br />
species and then assigning their location in a zoo or a botanical garden<br />
than a nation’s internal rise toward self-determination.Nevertheless, the<br />
scientists, in this instance Russian linguists, anthropologists, and politicians,<br />
had done fairly competent work: one proof is that when the failed<br />
coup of August 1991 against Gorbachev’s reforms brought about the<br />
collapse of the Soviet Union, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Turkmenistan,<br />
and Uzbekistan have forcefully asserted their national identity as independent<br />
republics.<br />
A frequent statement in the voluminous Sovietological and post-<br />
Sovietological literature produced in the West is that the borders created<br />
through national delimitation are “artificial,” and minority pockets in<br />
many parts of Central Asia are mentioned as proof of that; moreover,<br />
incidents like the bloody fighting between the large Uzbek minority and<br />
Kyrgyz nationalists that occurred during June 1990 in the Osh region of<br />
Kyrgyzstan are adduced as portents of catastrophic upheavals in the<br />
future.The answer is that perfectly monoethnic and monolingual populations<br />
in a territory they consider their homeland and dominate politically<br />
are a rare occurrence in any part of the world, and that virtually<br />
every national state must devise a compromise on how to deal with one<br />
or more minorities.The related question of the official language versus<br />
dialects or minority languages is also sometimes mentioned as proof that<br />
the borders are “artificial”: Uzbekistan, we are told, is really a mosaic of<br />
local Turkic idioms.Here too the dichotomy between the official or<br />
“correct” language and an assortment of regional or social dialects,<br />
225
226 A history of Inner Asia<br />
besides minority languages, is not limited to Uzbekistan, and myriad<br />
examples could be cited, from the dialects of Germany and Britain to<br />
Ebonics and Spanish of the United States.<br />
This is not to say that there cannot be cases where a minority ceases<br />
to be a minority, whether for reasons of sheer numbers or other circumstances<br />
such as the geopolitical ones.Kazakhstan displays both these<br />
aspects.Its large and fairly compact Slavic population, further swelled<br />
by two post-delimitation immigration waves, presents a perhaps intractable<br />
problem if the integrity of the republic’s borders is identified with<br />
the identity and loyalty of its citizens.Tajikistan struggles with a somewhat<br />
contradictory problem: it even lacks the minimal cohesion offered<br />
by tribal formations and confederations, characteristic of Turkic<br />
nomads, that might help its people develop a sense of a national identity;<br />
at the same time, the one element that should cement Tajik society<br />
as a viable polity grounded in a politically defined territory, Persian language<br />
and civilization, is too vast and associated with other cultural and<br />
political centers to inject the necessary dose of patriotism in the minds<br />
and feelings of Tajik educated elites.Such places as Samarkand,<br />
Bukhara, or Shiraz are felt to be their historical and cultural centers, in<br />
comparison with which Tajikistan – even its capital, Dushanbe – may<br />
have difficulties shedding the stigma of provinciality or irrelevance.<br />
The foundations of Soviet Central Asia’s five republics were laid, as<br />
we have said, by October 1924.The framework that was the Union of<br />
Soviet Socialist Republics had been formed two years earlier, in<br />
December 1922, setting the stage for each of the non-Russian groups of<br />
the former Russian empire to find its niche in the new structure.The<br />
niche varied according to the label assigned to an ethnic group by the<br />
planners in Moscow, and some labels were modified or reshuffled in<br />
the course of time.This happened also in Central Asia, but by 1937 the<br />
process was completed, and the area acquired the political physiognomy<br />
that would last until the end of the Soviet regime.The hallmark of this<br />
political physiognomy was its ultimate uniformity.Each of the five<br />
republics acquired the status of a union republic – Uzbekistan and<br />
Turkmenistan as early as 1924, Tajikistan in 1929, Kazakhstan and<br />
Kyrgyzstan in 1936 – and a new constitution was adopted by the parliament<br />
of every republic in the spring of 1937 (to be replaced by yet<br />
another, the last Soviet, constitution in 1978).Each was called by its<br />
ethnic name in the adjectival form followed by the epithets “Soviet<br />
Socialist” qualifying the word “Republic”: for example, Uzbek Sovet
Soviet Central Asia 227<br />
Sotsialistik Respublikasi (UzSSR, this acronym having the advantage of<br />
serving also the republic’s Russian name, Uzbekskaya Sovetskaya<br />
Sotsialisticheskaya Respublika).The form Uzbekiston, in Russian<br />
Uzbekistan, was used too, although in less official contexts.There were<br />
fifteen Union Republics in the Soviet Union, all modeled after the same<br />
pattern, except that the prima inter pares enjoyed a special status: the<br />
RSFSR, or Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic.The word “federative”<br />
expressed further internal federative structure, as this republic<br />
included sixteen “autonomous” republics, all forming a federation with<br />
the senior Russian partner.This usage was somewhat inaccurate or<br />
inconsistent, since some of the other Union republics also included<br />
“autonomous” republics such as the Karakalpak Autonomous Soviet<br />
Socialist Republic within the UzSSR, so that the latter should have contained<br />
that epithet too: Uzbek Soviet Federative Socialist Republic,<br />
UzSFSR.In Central Asia, Tajikistan was the only other republic to<br />
include a unit of this kind, though with a status still a notch lower: the<br />
Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (Oblast).<br />
A Union republic had to meet certain conditions and enjoyed special<br />
rights, even if the latter were granted only theoretically.The most visible<br />
condition was that some of its borders run alongside a foreign country;<br />
of the five republics in question, Kazakhstan’s and Kyrgyzstan’s did so<br />
alongside China, Tajikistan’s alongside China and Afghanistan,<br />
Uzbekistan’s alongside Afghanistan, and Turkmenistan’s alongside<br />
Afghanistan and Iran.Among the privileges of a Union republic, the<br />
most comprehensive – if it should indeed be considered a privilege and<br />
not an imposition – was a structure mirroring that of the Russian SFSR<br />
and, in certain respects, of the Soviet Union as a whole.Its most striking<br />
right, explicitly stated in the 1937 constitution, was that to leave the<br />
Soviet Union altogether and become an independent country.<br />
Additional symbols of each republic’s “sovereignty” were its own flag,<br />
emblem, and national anthem.The term “sovereign,” a loanword in<br />
Russian (suverennyi) and thence adopted also by the Central Asian languages<br />
(usually suveren) was used in the respective constitutions, rather<br />
than “independent” (nezavisimyi in Russian, mustaqil in Uzbek for<br />
example), a significant nuance.By “structure” we mean chiefly administrative,<br />
political and economic structure, but also the cultural and spiritual<br />
institutions and even the way of life, to the extent that the latter<br />
could be fashioned by Moscow.<br />
A good example is the Uzbek SSR in its final Soviet form after the
228 A history of Inner Asia<br />
adoption of the third constitution in 1978, as it is described in the Uzbek<br />
Sovet Entsiklopediyasi (Uzbek Soviet Encyclopaedia, Tashkent 1980, vol.<br />
14, pp.490–91):<br />
The Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republic is a socialist populist state (sotsialistik<br />
umumkhalq davlat) which expresses the will and interests of the republic’s workers,<br />
agriculturists, and intellectuals (ishchilar, dehqonlar, va ziyalilar), and of the toilers<br />
(mehnatkashlar) of all nationalities (millatlar) and ethnic groups (elatlar)....The<br />
UzSSR is a sovereign state (suveren davlat) with equal rights (teng huquqli) within<br />
the framework of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, which firmly ties<br />
together all the nationalities and ethnic groups as a polity, the Soviet people,<br />
with the goal of together building communism (kommunizm qurish uchun).Its<br />
government functions on its own territory in an independent manner, except<br />
for those questions that pertain to the highest organs of the USSR; it has the<br />
right to freely leave the USSR (öz erki bilan SSSRdan chiqish huquqini saqlaydi)....<br />
The Uzbek SSR has the right to establish relations with foreign countries, to<br />
make treaties with them, to appoint diplomatic and consular representatives<br />
with them, to participate in the activities of international organizations.The<br />
sovereign rights of the Uzbek SSR are guaranteed by the USSR according to<br />
its own Constitution [that is, the Constitution of the Soviet Union]. ...The<br />
highest governmental organ is the unicameral Supreme Soviet [Russian<br />
“sovet,” literally, “council, advice” but here with the connotation of “parliament,<br />
congress”] of the Uzbek SSR (Uzbekiston SSR Oliy Soveti), elected for five<br />
years....During the periods of recess, its work is done by the Presidium of the<br />
Supreme Soviet.The highest executive and administrative organ is the Council<br />
of Ministers of the Uzbek SSR (Uzbekiston SSR Ministrlar Soveti).The organs of<br />
local government are the Soviets of people’s deputies from regions (oblast), districts<br />
(raion), towns (shahar), townships ( poselka), villages (qishloq), and encampments<br />
(ovul ), elected for two and a half years.Thirty-two deputies from<br />
Uzbekistan, and eleven deputies from Karakalpakistan are elected to the Soviet<br />
of Nationalities (Millatlar Soveti) of the Supreme Sovet of the USSR....The<br />
pivot (özak) of the republic’s governmental and social organisms is the guiding<br />
and leading force of Soviet society, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union<br />
and one of its advance platoons (avangard otryadlaridan biri), the Communist Party<br />
of Uzbekistan.<br />
We have emphasized two clauses in the quoted summary, because<br />
they stand out for their special importance.The first states that the<br />
government of Uzbekistan functions on its territory except in those<br />
matters that pertain to the whole USSR; the principal matters in question<br />
were defense, finance, communications and transportation, and<br />
foreign affairs, all of which were centrally directed from Moscow.This<br />
alone shows how purely theoretical was Uzbekistan’s freedom to leave<br />
the Soviet Union.The second clause, “The pivot of the republic’s<br />
governmental and social organisms is the guiding and leading force of
Soviet Central Asia 229<br />
Soviet society, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union...”, is especially<br />
significant; it reveals the unique role of the Communist Party,<br />
totally different from that of a political party in the Western sense: an<br />
organism beyond and above the law and conventional government, it<br />
was the real master of the country.The remark about its Uzbek branch<br />
is revealing too: like a military platoon, it had to carry out the orders of<br />
the high command at the center (hence the Russo-Uzbek term otryad,<br />
rather uncommon outside of military parlance).<br />
Aside from these specific aspects of integrated parallelism, there also<br />
existed a less explicit but nevertheless pervasive and insidious integration.A<br />
doubling of functions was one such device: the fact that almost<br />
every functionary in a top executive position, whether governmental,<br />
political, or cultural, had a twin colleague, theoretically the number two<br />
of that position but in fact performing the role of keeping an eye on his<br />
partner.In most cases, the “number one” was an Uzbek, Kazakh, etc.,<br />
according to the republic, “number two” being a Slav, usually a Russian<br />
or a Ukrainian.Another device was the doubling of the basic institutions<br />
or publications with Russian ones – or, rather, of the Russian ones with<br />
the native ones.Thus the Communist Party of the RSFSR was paralleled<br />
by those of the republics, in addition to the existence, as the<br />
supreme arbiter, of an All-Union party; the Academy of Sciences of the<br />
Russian SFSR was paralleled by those of the other Union republics,<br />
again in addition to the Academy of Sciences of the USSR; the Union<br />
of Writers of the Russian SFSR, by those of the other republics (again,<br />
besides the umbrella Union of Writers of the USSR).The literary<br />
monthly Novyi Mir, published by the Union of Soviet Writers in Moscow,<br />
had such counterparts as the bimonthly Sharq Yulduzi published by the<br />
Union of Uzbek writers in Tashkent; the Bolshaya Sovetskaya Entsiklopediya,<br />
the Great Soviet Encyclopedia, also had its counterparts in the encyclopedias<br />
of the Union Republics, published to accompany the new constitutions<br />
of 1978 (besides the fourteen-volume Uzbek one, there is the<br />
thirteen-volume Qazaq Sovet Entsiklopediyasy, the eight-volume Türkmen<br />
Sovet Entsiklopediyasy, the eight-volume Entsiklopediyai Sovetii Tojik, and the<br />
six-volume Kyrgyz Sovet Entsiklopediyasy).<br />
The constitution naturally says nothing about religion, unless we take<br />
the plausible view that Communism and the Communist Party assumed<br />
the role of religion and of an organized religious hierarchy.We have<br />
seen the central place that Islam had occupied in the life of the area’s<br />
Muslims, and the new regime made a sustained and massive effort to<br />
eradicate it and to substitute “scientific atheism” and Communism for
230 A history of Inner Asia<br />
it.It is true that the regime could not quite rid itself of its contradictions,<br />
for it did not dismantle the organized religious hierarchy altogether, and<br />
eventually allowed a drastically reduced church body to continue functioning<br />
as an obedient government agency.Thus in 1942 a “directorate<br />
of the Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan” was established in<br />
Tashkent, and a reduced number of mosques was permitted to operate<br />
in the area.Two madrasas, Baraq Khan in Tashkent and Mir Arab in<br />
Bukhara, trained the small number of Muslim clergymen who would<br />
then enter a profession made ambiguous at best by the regime.Why did<br />
the Soviets allow even this marginal existence of organized Islam? For<br />
several reasons: one was simple imitation of the RSFSR, where the<br />
Orthodox Church was treated in a similar manner; another was the<br />
desire to court foreign Muslim countries, whose heads of state and<br />
official delegations to the Soviet Union routinely received a tour of<br />
Central Asia.<br />
This integrated parallelism of Central Asia was buttressed by what<br />
must conventionally be considered remarkable progress, for the Soviets<br />
made efforts to modernize and develop the area and its society with<br />
unprecedented speed and energy.Once Soviet rule was established,<br />
reforms and creative innovation followed, some immediate, some<br />
gradual and appearing only after the Second World War.<br />
Literacy became general within a few years among the school-age<br />
generation, and increased among the rest of the population through<br />
broad “campaigns to eradicate illiteracy.” Education was restructured,<br />
expanded, and modernized along uniform Soviet lines, from the grade<br />
school level, where native attendance was made mandatory, to that of<br />
the university and academic research institutions, where it was facilitated<br />
and encouraged.The printed word gives another graphic example of<br />
the change.Where there had been few or no newspapers, periodicals, or<br />
printed books, after 1924 they quickly appeared in all the five languages,<br />
and the number and volume skyrocketed.Most remarkably, the end<br />
result of this linguistic-cultural revolution was the creation of six new literary<br />
languages (Uzbek, Kazakh, Kyrgyz, Turkmen, Tajik, and<br />
Karakalpak) in a society that had previously used Chaghatay Turkic and<br />
Farsi (Persian) for written expression.<br />
The socio-economic restructuring broke the back of the old order and<br />
established a new one to the same degree it had done so in Russia.The<br />
means of production – agricultural and pastoral land and livestock,<br />
forests, mineral wealth, and industry – were nationalized or collectivized.The<br />
wealth of the religious establishment, especially considerable
Soviet Central Asia 231<br />
in Central Asia because of the Islamic institution of waqf (pious endowment),<br />
was confiscated, and its institutions – mosques, madrasas, khangahs<br />
– were closed, again except for the token cases of the<br />
aforementioned Baraq Khan madrasa in Tashkent and Mir Arab<br />
madrasa in Bukhara besides a scattering of mosques.Women were given<br />
equal rights and opportunity of education and employment, and the<br />
natives were not only welcomed but actively recruited to participate in<br />
the political and administrative process.The separation of Russians and<br />
natives, rulers and ruled, characteristic of the Tsarist and revolutionary<br />
eras, gave way to a theoretical equality tempered by a carefully monitored<br />
deference to the role played by the “Big Brother.”<br />
One of the characteristic results of Russian rule – Tsarist but especially<br />
Soviet – was population growth and urbanization.This was due<br />
partly to the law and order installed by the colonial power which presented<br />
a sharp contrast to the endemic warfare that used to plague the<br />
area; and to the introduction of modern medicine, however rudimentary<br />
it may have been (and remained) if judged by modern Western standards.Accurate<br />
figures with vital statistics prior to the Soviet period are<br />
lacking or of only limited use; before the conquest, censuses in the<br />
modern sense did not exist, and before the Soviet period, the administrative<br />
boundaries within Central Asia were too different from the<br />
present ones to allow accurate comparison.This changed with the<br />
National Delimitation of 1924.The first comprehensive census was<br />
taken in 1926 and was repeated in 1939, 1959, 1979, and 1989.In 1926,<br />
the total population was 13,671,000 souls; in 1989, it was 49,119,267.<br />
Some of this increase was due to the aforementioned influx of immigrants<br />
from other parts of the empire, chiefly from Russia and Ukraine,<br />
which reached massive proportions in Kazakhstan and to some extent<br />
also in Kyrgyzstan, and in administrative and industrial centers like<br />
Tashkent, Almaty, and Bishkek.The main reason for the growth has<br />
been, however, the high birthrate of the native population.Until<br />
recently, this phenomenon was viewed as a positive element in the development<br />
of Central Asia and was encouraged by the Soviet government.<br />
These measures, goals, and accomplishments were based, however,<br />
on principles and methods which beyond certain limits undermined the<br />
system’s positive achievements and ultimate justification.The total<br />
power enjoyed by the Communist elite created a new bureaucratic aristocracy<br />
in the supposedly classless society, a paradox underlined by the<br />
contradictory claim that Soviet rule was a rule of the working class.The<br />
interests of the workers never lost a place of importance in the policies
232 A history of Inner Asia<br />
of the government, but they became ever more subordinated to the paramount<br />
interests of the new class of Communist bureaucrats obsessed<br />
with the perpetuation of their own power and privileges, which could be<br />
assured only through the suppression of all attempts at any alternative<br />
methods, debates, or experiments, whether political, economic, or cultural<br />
(strikes, for example, were out of the question).It may be instructive<br />
to quote a Western journalist who in 1992 visited the Kazakh city of<br />
Karaganda, center of an extensive coalmining region.The place was<br />
still reeling from the unprecedented events of 1989: “In 1989 these<br />
fearful [coal mining] tunnels spat out their miners in a strike which was<br />
echoed across the Union.Its men were young, angry and organised.<br />
They demanded, and won, an independent trade union.After sixty<br />
years of servitude, the workers were on the march.But their model, they<br />
said, was the United States of America.” 1<br />
On the all-Union level, this led to increasing stagnation and the development<br />
of an unnatural, hypocritical psychological climate; in the case<br />
of Central Asia, the “vertical” self-interest of the new Communist class<br />
was compounded by a “horizontal” self-interest, a pronounced Moscowcentered<br />
and Russo-centric chauvinism that continued the forced submission<br />
of the natives to the Russians despite the “international”<br />
equality claimed by the system.The word “international” (internatsionalnyi<br />
in Russian, introduced into Uzbek etc.as internatsional) had in this<br />
context a special significance: for its parameter was strictly circumscribed<br />
by the outside limits of the Soviet Union, so that the term<br />
applied exclusively to the mutual relationship of the ethnic conglomerate<br />
in that country, and it differed from the word mezhdunarodnyi (khalqaro<br />
in Uzbek), a synonym of internatsionalnyi but applied only to relations with<br />
non-Soviet countries and nationalities. Internatsionalnyi had a positive connotation,<br />
from the point of view of Soviet ideology, in a sense virtually<br />
the inverse of the word’s original meaning: an effacement of ethnic<br />
differences in favor of a growing mutuality and eventual sameness.This<br />
sameness could not but be anchored in a Russian or Russified identity, a<br />
goal known as sliyanie, “fusion,” with the eventual appearance of the legendary<br />
sovetskiy chelovek, the homo sovieticus who also found his way into<br />
Central Asian terminology (sovet kishisi in Uzbek for example).This may<br />
indeed have been the ultimate meaning of the perennial refrain of<br />
“together building Communism,” otherwise puzzling for a society<br />
already ruled by a Communist government. 2<br />
1 C.Thubron, The Lost Heart of Asia (Penguin Books, 1994), p.340.<br />
2 Purists of Marxism-Leninism of course could retort that the role of the Communist Party was<br />
only to steer a socialist state under its stewardship toward the golden age of Communism.
Soviet Central Asia 233<br />
The role of the Russian language and culture, and of the Russian<br />
people in general, as values and models to be adopted and ultimately to<br />
be identified with was overwhelming and beyond question or criticism.<br />
Russian was each republic’s principal official language, and had the<br />
upper hand in the bilingual routine of public life and its “international”<br />
dimension; it also invaded the native languages in two ways: through the<br />
alphabet and through the vocabulary.A characteristic complement was<br />
the switch from the Roman to the Cyrillic alphabet ordered by Moscow<br />
in 1940.The Central Asians themselves had dropped the Arabic script<br />
and adopted the Roman one in 1928, a sensible move on several counts:<br />
like the Sogdian script in the case of classical Uighur for example, the<br />
structure of the Arabic script, viable in the case of a Semitic language,<br />
was ill-suited for both the Turkic and Iranian idioms of Central Asia,<br />
whereas Roman did meet such needs.A similar step was being taken in<br />
Turkey, and using the same alphabet would have enhanced the communication<br />
channels of the Central Asian and Anatolian Turks, besides<br />
bringing obvious practical dividends; and finally the Roman script is one<br />
more window to the world scene, so that its choice would have made<br />
sense in Central Asia no less than in Turkey.The last two reasons were<br />
of course the main arguments against it from Moscow’s standpoint, and<br />
Moscow’s wishes prevailed.The other measure was the lexical and phonetic<br />
intrusion of the Russian language into the native ones (thus mainly<br />
into the Turkic languages, but also into Tajik).Loanwords were no<br />
strangers in Central Asia, but they had entered the local languages<br />
through centuries-long processes of acculturation that responded to a<br />
natural need and bowed to the phonetic laws of the host idioms.Taking<br />
Kyrgyz as an example, the Arabic words fatiha (name of the opening sura<br />
in the Koran) became bata, ramadan (ninth month of the lunar calendar)<br />
became yramazan, the Persian word hunar (art, craft) became önör.Russian<br />
words and names, on the other hand, were introduced with all their<br />
tongue-twisting – that is, tongue-twisting for speakers of a Turkic or<br />
Iranian language – and graphic paraphernalia, and those that had been<br />
naturalized before the Soviet period were duly restored to their so totally<br />
alien phonetical shape (thus iskusstvo for fine art, despite the availability<br />
of the Kyrgyz körköm önör).A related feature was the substitution of<br />
imposed place names for native ones; thus Przheval’sk, a city that was so<br />
renamed to the detriment of the original and thoroughly Kyrgyz Karakol.<br />
This possibly deliberate tactlessness went beyond the question of language<br />
and was also symbolized by the case of the capital of Kyrgyzstan,<br />
Frunze: for Bishkek was renamed after Mikhail Vasilevich Frunze, the<br />
Bolshevik general born in Bishkek of Moldavian-Russian parents, who
234 A history of Inner Asia<br />
had led during the civil war the principal military operations that consolidated<br />
Soviet rule in Central Asia (even this measure might have been<br />
mitigated if the popular Kyrgyz pronunciation of the name, Paranzo,<br />
had been adopted).The Uzbek, Turkmen, etc.nations’ foremost founding<br />
fathers, heroes, and contemporary leaders were Russians or Russified<br />
Soviet leaders, from Lenin to Stalin, Brezhnev and Gorbachev.The<br />
naming of the principal institutions after a Russian rather than an<br />
Uzbek, for example, could invade even what should have remained the<br />
natives’ inviolable ground: thus the name of the Institute for Literature<br />
of the Uzbek Academy of Sciences had the epithetic label “Pushkin’s”<br />
(imeni Pushkina in Russian, Pushkin nomidagi in Uzbek) – as if the Uzbeks<br />
had never had any great poets of their own.What indeed stood in the<br />
way of naming this institute, central to the nation’s cultural dignity, after<br />
Mir Ali Shir Navai for example, the great Timurid poet of the fifteenth<br />
century? The fact that a more modern personality was deemed preferable?<br />
Then again, why not an Uzbek literary figure? The thought<br />
process of the Russian masters of Uzbekistan, or perhaps of those<br />
Uzbeks who were eager to ingratiate themselves with their masters, is an<br />
intriguing case of political psychopathology.Pushkin died in 1837 at the<br />
age of thirty-eight, humiliated by a system with which he had found it<br />
hard to compromise; a century later, the Uzbek poet Cholpan disappeared<br />
in the Gulag at a similar age and for similar reasons.This and his<br />
brave and beautiful verse induced some critics to call him “the Uzbek<br />
Pushkin.” Cholpan was not a political figure, but compromise in his case<br />
would not have been just with a system but with a foreign invader.He<br />
was arrested in 1934, briefly released, then rearrested, and disappeared<br />
in the Gulag.When they first released Cholpan, the authorities must<br />
have hoped that he had been frightened into submission like most others,<br />
but he recited the following poem at a public appearance in a Tashkent<br />
theater: “Qolimda songgi tash qaldi, Yavimga atmaq istayman.<br />
Könglimdä songgi dard qaldi, Könglimdä songgi dard qaldi, Tiläkgä<br />
yetmaq istayman....” (“The last stone is in my hand, I want to fling it<br />
at my foe.The last pain is in my heart, I want to reach my dream.”)<br />
The main goal of the repression may have been ultimate integration<br />
through a total abandonment of the national will to that of the Russians.<br />
The official versions of the republics’ history and myriad statements and<br />
articles portrayed the Russian conquest not as a conquest but as a “voluntary<br />
unification (dobrovolnoe prisoedinenie) of the Uzbeks (or Kazakhs,<br />
Kyrgyz, etc.) with Russia,” and its effects as positive, even though this<br />
“voluntary unification” had taken place in the days of the otherwise cen-
Soviet Central Asia 235<br />
sured Tsarist regime; and the present was portrayed as a golden age in<br />
which the destinies of the two peoples were “forever” cemented in an<br />
association between a generous and wise senior partner and a grateful<br />
junior one.A perhaps not readily visible but important aspect of this<br />
doctrine is the fact that no other interpretation was allowed.<br />
Those were the days when the Soviet government was posing as the<br />
champion of the oppressed colonial peoples of Africa and Asia and<br />
heaping abuse on the colonizers; and once the colonies had become<br />
independent in the 1950s and 1960s, the propaganda quickly switched<br />
to the thesis of neo-colonialism while using the resources of the Soviet<br />
empire for the deadly game of subversion so as to turn that part of the<br />
world into a Communist one.Yet at the same time its special brand of<br />
colonial exploitation of Central Asia not only went on unchecked, but<br />
in certain respects it reached monstrous proportions.The classic colonial<br />
pattern of hauling away raw materials in return for finished products<br />
acquired here a degree and forms never imposed by Western powers<br />
on their colonies.As we have said in the introductory chapter, Moscow<br />
turned Central Asia into a megafarm designed to produce ever greater<br />
quantities of cotton.To this end irrigation kept being expanded beyond<br />
the capacity of Central Asian rivers, the soil exhausted by monoculture<br />
kept being saturated with chemical fertilizers, the crops sprayed by<br />
clouds of pesticides and herbicides, and instead of fully mechanizing the<br />
production, cheap native labor was routinely used for harvesting the<br />
Uzbeks’ oq oltin, “white gold,” as the Soviet propaganda cruelly termed<br />
this special variant of “king cotton.” A grim feature of this cheap labor<br />
was schoolchildren, driven to the insalubrious fields in the fall instead of<br />
studying in the classrooms.The policy of cotton monoculture became<br />
pronounced in the 1930s, but it was especially from the 1960s to the<br />
1980s that it reached truly monstrous proportions.Meanwhile genuinely<br />
beneficial economic development of the area such as industrialization,<br />
modestly begun in the 1920s, remained stunted as Moscow chose to<br />
place capital investment elsewhere.Moreover, such industry as there was<br />
tended to be concentrated in urban areas where Russian and other<br />
European workforces, often imported for the purpose, outnumbered the<br />
natives.<br />
Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan, and up to a point Kazakhstan<br />
were the main producers of cotton.Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan were<br />
used in other ways to suit the rulers in Moscow.The nomadic herders of<br />
Kazakhstan had seen much of their grazing space reduced by the influx<br />
of Russian settlers in the Tsarist era, but in the early years of Soviet rule
236 A history of Inner Asia<br />
they still occupied considerable tracts in the country’s center and east.<br />
At the end of the 1920s and beginning of the 1930s the Soviet government<br />
launched forced collectivization of their herds and imposed their<br />
own sedentarization.The nomads met this campaign with resistance,<br />
often destroying their livestock, and the ensuing famine in turn decimated<br />
the Kazakhs’ population by at least one million souls.By the late<br />
1930s, the percentage of the Kazakhs in their own republic fell to 29<br />
percent.The vacated or sparsely populated territories became that<br />
much more inviting for further influx of Slavic settlers, which culminated<br />
in the celebrated “virgin land” campaign launched by<br />
Khrushchev in the late 1950s and early 1960s.The economic wisdom of<br />
this policy was questionable at best.The area seems to lack adequate<br />
rainfall for full-scale farming, whereas it was suited for a pastoral<br />
economy.There appeared ominous signs of soil erosion and<br />
desertification, but that did not bother the authorities any more than the<br />
many other forms of environmental degradation caused by ruthless<br />
exploitation such as strip mining.<br />
The province of Semipalatinsk in eastern Kazakhstan was chosen as<br />
the area for Soviet nuclear experiments, but neither the testing nor the<br />
damage it caused to the health of the people were even mentionable<br />
before the dawn of glasnost and perestroika.The testing has ceased, but its<br />
consequences are still very much there, and the Kazakhs can point to it<br />
as yet another example of violence done to their country by the alien<br />
who had conquered it a century ago.Moreover, it appears that other<br />
parts of Central Asia were used as dumping grounds of toxic waste.One<br />
such site apparently was in the vicinity of Chirchik, a town some thirty<br />
kilometers to the northeast of Tashkent.According to the Uzbek writer<br />
Dada Khan Nuriy, the officials – Uzbek officials – tried to cover up the<br />
existence of this dump, and the eventual confession is worth quoting:<br />
Now that we have glasnost, then so be it: the truth is, comrades, that in 1985, on<br />
instructions from higher authority, arsenic wastes were brought from the<br />
Ministry of Electronics Industry in the Moscow region and buried....I had to<br />
obey orders.” 3<br />
Whether it was cotton fields with which Moscow blanketed vast tracts<br />
of Central Asia, or kolkhozes where Slavic settlers were brought to grow<br />
maize, or dumping grounds for toxic waste, the policy had smooth<br />
sailing among the native politicians of Central Asia.The generation of<br />
3 J.Critchlow, Nationalism in Uzbekistan (Boulder, 1991), pp.92–94.The author refers to an article<br />
published by Dada Khan Nuriy in the newspaper Özbekistan adabiyati va sanati, 15 December 1989.
Soviet Central Asia 237<br />
Communist patriots of the 1920s and 1930s was now replaced by a new<br />
breed of apparatchiks whose main ambition was how to please their<br />
masters in Moscow and thereby attain their own positions of privilege<br />
and comfort.The price of this was total betrayal of the interests of their<br />
own countries and peoples.<br />
Politicians were not the only elite in Central Asia, however.There<br />
arose a whole new generation of educated people, individuals who had<br />
benefited from the bright side of Soviet rule.They availed themselves of<br />
the expanded and free education vigorously promoted by the government,<br />
and came to occupy professions of their choice, but especially<br />
those most congenial to them such as journalism or teaching and<br />
research in the proliferating schools, universities, and academies.True,<br />
there was some degree of overlapping between them and the politicians.<br />
They had to be realists, and membership in the Communist Party or at<br />
least demonstration of loyalty to the regime was a prerequisite for any<br />
individual to function successfully.By the time the native scholars and<br />
writers were producing the voluminous literary and learned output of<br />
the post-Second World War decades, they knew what they could and<br />
could not dare.This had been driven home during the 1930s so forcefully<br />
that only occasional reminders were needed later on.The total submission<br />
and integration of each nation was achieved through a political<br />
process conceived, planned, and carried out by Moscow, and then<br />
guarded by means of an all-pervasive control and enforcement apparatus.The<br />
aforementioned Cholpan was only the most poignant example<br />
of all those who fell victim to the terror designed to stifle the least stirrings<br />
of independent patriotism.Thus Abdarrauf Fitrat, the reformist<br />
and scholar of the early decades of the century, disappeared in the<br />
Gulag by the end of the 1930s, as did several other prominent leaders;<br />
Fayzulla Khojaev, Fitrat’s contemporary and prime minister of the<br />
Uzbek SSR in the early years, was one of those tried and executed in<br />
Moscow in 1938.Törekul Aitmatov, father of the renowned Kyrgyz<br />
writer Chingiz Aitmatov and a member of the Communist Party, also<br />
succumbed in the Gulag on the mere suspicion of harboring nationalist<br />
tendencies.The result was that the Uzbeks and other Central Asians<br />
learned to tread warily when questions of their national dignity, values,<br />
or even their people’s material interests were concerned.Fitrat’s fate<br />
warned those who might have wished to follow his example and overstep<br />
the confines of the Uzbek republic in their quest for a Central Asian<br />
cultural heritage symbolized by the Chaghatay language and literature;<br />
the example of Khojaev, who had verses from the Koran recited at the
238 A history of Inner Asia<br />
grave of his brother, made it clear that an act anchored in their spiritual<br />
values might later be cited as one of the crimes contributing to their<br />
doom in a Soviet courthouse; and Cholpan’s and Törekul Aitmatov’s<br />
fate, at the two poles of the spectrum and thus seemingly incompatible<br />
– one was a dissident, the other a member of the Communist Party –<br />
may have been linked by the Moscow-based dictator’s determination to<br />
break the spirit of his subject peoples.<br />
As we have already implied, however, our critical view of the imposition<br />
of things Russian on Central Asians does need qualifications.<br />
Contradiction marked Soviet national and linguistic policies, as it did, in<br />
fact, much of the philosophy underlying the entire system.It began at<br />
the very inception with the establishment of ethnolinguistic borders.<br />
Moscow could have chosen other ways to organize Central Asia, for<br />
example along economic or geographical lines.Such measures would<br />
have made Russian the only really viable language, with education, literacy,<br />
and publishing taking place exclusively through it, and with the<br />
Kipchak, Turki, and Tajik “dialects” receding into the well-meaning<br />
paternalism of anthropological studies.Yet not only did Moscow anchor<br />
the correctly identified principal nationalities in a firm linguistic base,<br />
but it proceeded forthwith to consolidate that base through the aforementioned<br />
campaigns of education and publishing.If ultimate<br />
Russification was the goal, the Delimitation of 1924 was the wrong<br />
move, and the subsequent policies of mass education and publishing in<br />
the newly codified languages made it a fatal one. 4 The contradictory<br />
nature of Communist Moscow’s psyche may indeed have reached its<br />
climax in its nationalities policy.It brutally bore down on “chaghatayism,”<br />
an intellectual current among the area’s Turks wishing to conceive<br />
of Central Asia as a cultural unit, branding it as “bourgeois nationalism”<br />
and fearing it as a potent tool for unification and secession; yet at the<br />
same time it promoted the establishment of an Uzbek ethnolinguistic<br />
identity, allowing the natives to cultivate the identical national heritage<br />
under the officially sanctioned Uzbek ( or “Old Uzbek,” in the case of<br />
Chaghatay Turki language) label.Although there were times when<br />
Moscow invaded this last-named form of identity too and important<br />
aspects of national patrimony were pushed aside while those of Russia<br />
were prescribed as the monuments to admire and adopt, even then the<br />
system did not manage to abandon its own principles proclaiming the<br />
right to ethnolinguistic self-determination and development, as long as<br />
4 Fatal, that is, for the idea of Russification.
Soviet Central Asia 239<br />
central authority and Communism remained unchallenged.Moscow at<br />
times tried to slander the Uzbek epic Alpamysh or the Kyrgyz epic<br />
Manas, but it never ceased publishing the translated works of Lenin, the<br />
Party’s dailies, and the republics’ literary magazines in those nations’<br />
own languages.<br />
And the Central Asians remained keenly aware of their own identity.<br />
A generation or two after the sacrifice of such leaders as Fitrat and<br />
Cholpan, thus in the final stage of the Soviet system, their successors<br />
emerged as champions of the same values but able to survive both<br />
thanks to the lessons they had learned from the examples of their elders<br />
and to the system’s own contradictions or recognition of the inevitable.<br />
We have mentioned Törekul Aitmatov’s son, Chingiz Aitmatov (b.<br />
1928), as an eloquent messenger of these values.His stories and novels<br />
became a celebration of the Kyrgyz and Kyrgyzstan, although most had<br />
first been written in Russian and the author, on the surface, seemed<br />
willing to give the Caesar in Moscow his due.These two aspects – their<br />
Russian versions and the apparent acceptance of the system – made it<br />
possible for Aitmatov to survive and, instead of remaining confined to<br />
his charming but little known homeland and language, become famous<br />
throughout the Soviet Union and, indeed, worldwide.Once more we<br />
cannot but marvel at the contradictory complexity of the system in its<br />
final decades and eschew simplistic definitions or explanations.<br />
Aitmatov, the son of a Communist murdered for his Kyrgyz patriotism,<br />
was in his early youth rescued by the solidarity of his clan (a social<br />
feature which the system had condemned as a “feudal relic” and marked<br />
it for extinction); once survival was assured, he could enter the Soviet<br />
system of education which at first enabled him to acquire a decent profession<br />
(he became a veterinarian); once he began to write, his talent was<br />
noticed and he was offered a study fellowship at the Gorkiy Institute of<br />
Literature in Moscow; the two years of training there enabled him to<br />
perfect his talent with a well-honed technique, and the subsequent<br />
employment as a correspondent of Pravda in Kyrgyzstan proved to be an<br />
excellent gate of entry into his ultimate profession as a writer.Like most<br />
of his successful compatriots, he joined the Communist Party, and<br />
charmed his Kyrgyz as well as Russian and other readers with beautiful<br />
short stories and novels, several of which were used as film scenarios.Yet<br />
even he was once forcefully reminded of the system’s unforgiving strictures.When<br />
he published the novel The White Ship (it appeared first in<br />
Russian as Belyi parokhod, “The White Steamship,” in 1970, and only<br />
later in Kyrgyz as Ak keme, “The White Ship”), the official establishment
240 A history of Inner Asia<br />
disapproved of the novel’s tragic conclusion and ordered Aitmatov to<br />
rewrite it with the obligatory Soviet requirement of an Optimistic End.<br />
He did, and neither he nor his readers took that cosmetic change seriously<br />
– with the possible exception of the Party vigilantes still willing to<br />
fool themselves.Their discomfort was less readily removed when a whole<br />
novel turned out to be based on a theme that made them uncomfortable.<br />
An example of this was the Uzbek writer Pirimqul Qodirov’s Yulduzli<br />
tunlar (“Starry Nights”), a historical novel about the great native of<br />
Andijan, Emperor Babur.Like Aitmatov’s White Steamship, Starry Nights<br />
too was first hailed as a masterpiece by critics and readers, until “Party<br />
watchdogs” attacked it for its implicit nationalism.There is thus an<br />
analogy between the two writers, but there are also interesting<br />
differences.Both men, born in the same year (1928), received the critical<br />
part of their literary training at the Gorkiy Institute in Moscow, an<br />
example of the bright side of the system; Aitmatov was censored after<br />
the publication of the White Ship not for nationalism, but for pessimism<br />
– an example of where the system could be evenhanded (a Russian<br />
writer or artist would have run into the same trouble – as Shostakovich<br />
did for his opera Lady Macbeth of the Mtsensk District), whereas Qodirov was<br />
censored for nationalism (here, the system was Russo-centric; the great<br />
historical novels of Alexey Tolstoy glorifying Peter the Great met with<br />
acclaim from the highest quarters).<br />
While discussing the activities and tragic fate of people like Fitrat, we<br />
could have also mentioned their important contemporary Sadriddin<br />
Ayni (1878–1954).Ayni initially belonged to the circle of Bukharan<br />
jadids and displayed other analogies with them, especially with Fitrat.His<br />
later fate could not, however, have been more different.Ayni not only<br />
survived the terror of the 1930s but had a smooth sailing throughout the<br />
rest of his life, ever more honored by the official establishment as represented<br />
by the local and all-Union Unions of Soviet writers.His career<br />
reached its apogee with the presidency of the newly created Academy<br />
of Sciences of the Tajik SSR in 1951, a post he held until his death.A<br />
glance at his early life in the emirate of Bukhara, at the years of his prime<br />
in Samarkand, and at the closing period in Dushanbe may help us gain<br />
an idea of the secret of his success and importance.<br />
Ayni was born in Saktare, an agricultural village near Gijduvan, 5 a<br />
district town some forty kilometers to the northeast of Bukhara on the<br />
5 This was also the hometown of Abd al-Khaliq Ghijduvani, the important khwaja, in the “uwaysi”<br />
form, of Baha al-Din Naqshband (see p.138).
Soviet Central Asia 241<br />
road to Samarkand by the northern bank of the Zarafshan.Most people<br />
there were Tajiks, so that Farsi (Persian) was the boy’s mother tongue.<br />
From an early age, however, he also knew Turki-speaking neighbors, and<br />
after he had moved to Bukhara at the age of eleven in order to attend<br />
the madrasa, he became bilingual and literate in both languages.The<br />
decade he spent at this Muslim combination of highschool and university<br />
(1890–1900; the madrasas were Mir Arab, 1889–91; Olimjon,<br />
1892–93; Badalbek, 1894–96; Hoji Zohid, 1896–99; and Kukaldosh,<br />
1899–1900) exposed him to the influence of two types of his society’s<br />
educated elite: the conservative, chiefly clerical one with a basically medieval<br />
outlook; and those who had grasped the need for reform and were<br />
struggling to propagate it.Instruction at the madrasas was of the scholastic<br />
kind; some of the faculty and associates, however, passed over to<br />
the reformist camp, and it was through contact with them or their work,<br />
often in the midst of animated literary debates and parties in teachers’<br />
cells at the madrasas or in people’s homes, that Ayni was initiated to the<br />
new ideas.In volumes 3 and 4 of his Yoddoshtho (“Memoirs”), Ayni tells<br />
about the effect the personality and writings of Ahmad Donish<br />
(1827–97) had on him in his formative years.Donish, a Bukharan<br />
scholar and civil servant who participated in several diplomatic missions<br />
sent by the emir to St.Petersburg, observed the intellectual revolution<br />
that had set Europe on the path of modernization and dominance, and<br />
became the earliest harbinger of the need for reform in his homeland.<br />
He could do so without suffering the emir’s reprisal because the latter<br />
had at that stage not yet grasped the magnitude of a reformist’s criticism.<br />
Like most Bukharan intellectuals, Donish wrote in Farsi; and like Ayni,<br />
he was later appropriated by the Republic of Tajikistan as a “Tajik.” The<br />
Academy of Sciences of the Tajik SSR bore the honorific epithet “In<br />
the name of Donish” (Donish nomidagi Akademiyai Ulumi Tojik).<br />
By the time he left school and began his career as a teacher, writer,<br />
scholar, and journalist, Ayni had wholly espoused the reformists’ main<br />
goal, the new method [of education] (the usul-i jadid).Significantly, one<br />
of the first publications of this subsequently prodigiously productive<br />
writer and scholar was a textbook of readings for school-age children,<br />
Yoshlar tarbiyasi (“Youths’ education,” in Turki).This was the time when<br />
he and other members of the informal group of Young Bukharans still<br />
hoped that the Emir’s rule could be reformed without being overthrown,<br />
and that Islamic society in general only needed to rid itself of alien<br />
accretions and adopt some of the modern trends offered by Western civilization<br />
to recover its former glory and shake off the West’s tutelage.
242 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Alim Khan’s despotic rule, however, dashed these hopes, for it fiercely<br />
resisted the Young Bukharans’ efforts, especially once the latter group<br />
had become bolder after the February 1917 revolution in St.Petersburg.<br />
The despot’s rejection of reform was brutally demonstrated in the<br />
summer of that year, when he ordered his henchmen to round up a<br />
number of reformists and had them flogged; Ayni received 75 strokes,<br />
and may have survived only because Russian troops, quartered in the<br />
nearby railroad station enclave of Kagan, intervened and brought the<br />
victims to an infirmary there. 6 The intervention failed to save Ayni’s<br />
younger brother, however, who perished in the subsequent repression.<br />
One can imagine the powerful effect this traumatic experience must<br />
have left on Ayni’s psyche to the very end of his life.<br />
The October Revolution occurred on the heels of the repression in<br />
Bukhara, and the Jadids, as we have already stated, hailed it as they<br />
would have hailed any Russian power that gave promise to rid them of<br />
the emir and allow them to strive for a modernization and self-determination<br />
of Turkestan.Their activities were now centered at Tashkent and<br />
Samarkand, until such time as they could move back to Bukhara once<br />
the Russian troops ousted the Emir.That time came, we have seen, in<br />
September 1920.Significantly, Ayni did not join them but stayed in<br />
Samarkand.This had a more than just logistical significance.Unlike<br />
Fitrat, Khojaev, and the other former Young Bukharans, he stopped<br />
short of actively participating in the political drama that was unfolding<br />
in Central Asia, but mostly stayed within the cultural parameter of the<br />
revolution.Moreover, he took the Bolshevik side, and followed this line<br />
to the end of his life.This ensured not only his survival but his growing<br />
prominence as a pampered favorite of the official cultural establishment<br />
both in Moscow and in Central Asia.<br />
We might thus be tempted to write Sadriddin Ayni off as a collaborator,<br />
albeit a pardonable one.His case, however, is too complex and interesting,<br />
and his literary and scholarly contributions too valuable, to justify<br />
such a dismissal.On the literary level, his poems, short stories, and<br />
novels, written either in Farsi or Turki, became a powerful tool for giving<br />
these idioms – henceforward officially called Tajik and Uzbek – a firm<br />
literary base and thus a weapon against the danger of Russification<br />
(besides possessing an undeniable intrinsic value); this was compounded<br />
by the newly created periodical press where he often participated as a<br />
6 See the illustration no.36 in Kniga zhizni Sadriddina Ayni; The Book of Life of Sadriddin Aini (Dushanbe,<br />
1978) (a photograph showing his lacerated back).
Soviet Central Asia 243<br />
contributor and editor.On the scholarly level, he published solid historical<br />
and literary studies, again in both these languages (the former chiefly<br />
in Uzbek, the latter in Tajik).Admittedly, he did not openly come out<br />
against the terror of the 1930s which destroyed a number of his former<br />
comrades-at-arms and for a time dragged contemporary Central Asian<br />
culture to an even lower level than that of Russia.To do that would have<br />
been suicidal; what he managed to avoid, however, was the sycophantic<br />
behavior of those of his compatriots who, in order to save their lives,<br />
wallowed in the dust at the feet of the Moscow dictator.Ayni’s success<br />
was no doubt partly due to an early and then consistent espousal of the<br />
mainstream line with his political and journalistic tracts published in<br />
such newspapers as Mehnatkashlar tovushi (“Workers’ Voice,” 1918–22;<br />
Uzbek) or Shu”lai inqilob (“Flame of the Revolution,” 1919–21; Tajik),<br />
and his subsequent avoidance of too closely associating with the<br />
Chaghatay gurungi (“Chaghatay association”), founded in the 1920s by<br />
Fitrat and other Turkestani patriots who could not foresee that their<br />
patriotism, branded as nationalism, would later lead to their doom.It<br />
may be that Ayni’s separation from that group was not a simple case of<br />
political opportunism.His mother tongue was, after all, Persian, and the<br />
principal cultural heritage he adhered to was that of Iran in the broadest<br />
sense of the word.Fitrat, although he too grew up as a bilingual<br />
Bukharan, ultimately identified with the Turkic dimension of Central<br />
Asia, and there the two men parted company.Here too luck was on<br />
Ayni’s side: Moscow feared Turkic nationalism far more than Persian, or<br />
Tajik, or Iranian nationalism in Central Asia, and the cultivation of the<br />
region’s Iranian heritage may in fact have been viewed as a welcome<br />
antidote to the much more powerful and dangerous Turkic nationalism.<br />
The creation of Tajikistan could be seen as an extension of this view: in<br />
addition to partitioning Central Asia along separate Turkic languages,<br />
the creation of an Iranian unit built yet another obstacle to the dream<br />
of a unified Turkestan.Tajikistan, we have said, was the least natural of<br />
the republics that came into being through the process of razmezhevanie,<br />
and the chief reason for its creation would have been the Russian policy<br />
of divide et impera.Once again, however, the reality was not that simple.<br />
We have already expressed our reservations concerning a wholesale<br />
adoption of this interpretation, and Ayni’s life may serve here as an illustration<br />
of the contradictory nature of Soviet policy.He chose<br />
Samarkand as his home, and no doubt would have ended his days there<br />
if the nomination to the presidency of the newly established Tajik<br />
Academy of Sciences had not mandated his presence in Dushanbe for
244 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the final four years of his life.To him, Samarkand with its surroundings<br />
must have been an essentially Tajik city, as was probably Bukhara,<br />
whereas Dushanbe may have seemed but a paltry provincial town in<br />
comparison with those historic centers of Central Asian civilization.It<br />
is not known whether he ever uttered a word of disapproval at the time<br />
of the razmezhevanie or later, but he would surely have been delighted if<br />
Moscow had allotted Samarkand and Bukhara to Tajikistan as enclaves<br />
under the republic’s jurisdiction.Moscow, in turn, should have been glad<br />
to possess this special form of gerrymander as a fail-safe barrier against<br />
an effective pan-Turkic front.It had the means to create it, yet it didn’t.<br />
Sheer oversight may have been the cause, but then Moscow may also<br />
have drawn the line here and decided that these enclaves would cause<br />
too much confusion.(Another way would have been simply to attach the<br />
entire course of the Zarafshan to Tajikistan, treating the Uzbeks there<br />
as a minority; this would have dealt a still heavier blow to the goals of<br />
Pan-Turanism.)<br />
It may be worthwhile to mention a few of Ayni’s works.In 1920, he<br />
published in Turki Bukhoro inqilobi tarikhi uchun materiallar, “Materials on<br />
the history of the revolution of Bukhara,” in other words, of the fall of<br />
the emirate and establishment of the People’s Republic of Bukhara; in<br />
the following year came out his Bukhoro Manghit amirligining tarikhi,<br />
“History of the Manghit emirate of Bukhara,” again in Turki.In 1926<br />
Ayni published an anthology of Tajik (i.e. Persian) literature, Namunahoi<br />
adabieti Tojik, and in the 1930s and 1940s a number of studies of Persian<br />
and Chaghatay literary figures such as Firdawsi, Rudaki, Khujandi,<br />
Vasifi, and Navai.Meanwhile he never ceased writing chiefly political<br />
poetry, combining the time-honored Persian tradition of court poets<br />
with one of his principal activities, politically engaged journalism.An<br />
illustration of that is the quaint “Freedom March,” a poem in Turki<br />
(Marsh-i hurriyat) and in Farsi (Surud-i azadi), composed in 1918, to be sung<br />
to the tune of the Marseillaise.<br />
Writing poetry was of course an avocation of most educated Iranians,<br />
and writing scholarly and historical prose too had a long tradition.<br />
Belletristic prose, on the other hand, was all but non-existent, and here<br />
Ayni’s contribution was fundamental, for with his short stories, novels,<br />
and a lengthy autobiography he laid the foundations of this genre in<br />
both Tajik and Uzbek literature.Almost without exception, the theme<br />
of these works was the Farsi and Turki-speaking society of Bukhara in<br />
the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.In 1934 Ayni published<br />
what is considered his best novel, “Slaves,” simultaneously in Tajik
Soviet Central Asia 245<br />
(Ghulomon) and Uzbek (Qullar).The year of the publication was<br />
significant: Socialist Realism, the doctrine proclaimed at the 1932 convention<br />
of the Union of Soviet Writers in Moscow as the only ideological<br />
and thematic method permitted to Soviet authors, was in full swing,<br />
and Stalinist terror was beginning to flex its muscle.Yet Ayni managed<br />
to write a genuine work of literature, presenting a gripping picture of<br />
three generations of Bukharans before the transformations wrought by<br />
the Soviet regime.He demonstrated a similar ability with his impressive<br />
four-volume autobiography, which again he wrote both in Tajik<br />
(Yoddoshtha) and Uzbek (Esdaliklar).Published between 1949 and 1954,<br />
they cover his boyhood in Saktare (vol.1), his school years in the madrasas<br />
of Bukhara (vol.2), the society of Bukhara of those days (vol.3), and<br />
the political and social ferment gripping the emirate in its last years (vol.<br />
4).Only death, we are told, prevented Ayni from continuing or completing<br />
the memoirs.That would of course have meant employing all the<br />
paraphernalia of Socialist Realism for depicting the happiness of contemporary<br />
society, and it may have been this consideration rather than<br />
inexorable fate that thwarted the completion of the memoirs.<br />
Significantly, Ayni’s scholarly and belletristic prose was entirely focused<br />
on pre-Soviet themes, and only marginally or apparently did he give<br />
some due to the Caesar in Moscow.Even a theme like the eighth-century<br />
uprising of al-Muqanna (Isyëni Muqanna, Stalinabad 1944; see pp.65–6)<br />
could be interpreted in this ambiguous way: the somewhat socialist-like<br />
ideas reportedly harbored by the leader of Central Asians fighting<br />
against the Arab conqueror made this event one of the acceptable<br />
themes in Soviet historiography, but it could also be viewed as a patriotic<br />
rebellion against a foreign invader.Even more intriguing is Ayni’s<br />
study of an episode from the time of the Mongol invasion.Timur-Malik,<br />
governor of Khujand, put up a heroic though ultimately vain resistance<br />
to Mongol detachments sent by Genghis Khan’s sons Chaghatay and<br />
Ögedey.Ayni’s Qahramoni khalqi Tojik Temurmalik (“Timur-Malik, hero of<br />
the Tajik people”) also appeared during the war years, and symbolized,<br />
according to Soviet and satellite literary historians, “the hatred the<br />
author felt for the invaders of his homeland” (i.e. for the Germans invading<br />
Russia).The plausibility of a more nuanced interpretation is<br />
obvious.Sadriddin Ayni thus played an invaluable role in the<br />
reaffirmation of Central Asian cultural and linguistic identity, but in the<br />
complex and contradictory climate of Soviet national and colonial<br />
policy this role defies a simple definition.Above all, he took advantage<br />
of those aspects of Soviet rule that made it possible for Central Asians
246 A history of Inner Asia<br />
to successfully withstand the attempts of Russification.At the same time,<br />
his virtually double Tajik–Uzbek identity within the framework of<br />
Central Asia illustrates a case of ethnolinguistic complexity that may<br />
serve as a model for mutual respect and cooperation, but that also may<br />
need all the wisdom and tolerance of the region’s statesmen and citizens<br />
if its people want to strive for a harmonious future.<br />
Islam played an intriguing and complex role in this drama of one<br />
nation and civilization trying to force its will upon another.Like<br />
Orthodox Christianity in Russia, it was all but effaced from the surface<br />
of public and even private life until the Second World War, and officially<br />
propagated atheism came close to vie with Communism for the position<br />
of a new religion.What the government could not do, however, was to<br />
change the psychological substratum of a millennium-old lifestyle.Even<br />
the most avowed Communist Party members remained Muslim in<br />
certain basic respects, such as dietary preferences, marriages, burials,<br />
customs like circumcision.All that separated them from their Russian<br />
comrades.Mixed marriages between Muslims and Russians or other<br />
Europeans were rare, especially when the bride would have been a<br />
Muslim (a combination banned by Islamic law) – a fact that played a<br />
significant role in the resistance to linguistic and cultural Russification.<br />
The role of Islam did not stop there, however.Driven underground, 7<br />
its members continued to practice their religion in clandestine mosques,<br />
and some of them belonged to one or another of the aforementioned<br />
Sufi orders (tariqas) that had since the Middle Ages played a considerable<br />
social and political role in Central Asia.Moreover, an extremely potent<br />
force in religious life was veneration of local saints and pilgrimage to<br />
their shrines; those powerful and wealthy also often chose to be buried<br />
in the vicinity of a renowned saint’s tomb.This last-named practice<br />
could be prevented by the Soviet government, but the pilgrimage itself,<br />
popular especially among the masses, weathered all attempts of the<br />
authorities to stamp it out.A few examples may be instructive.<br />
One such site is the so-called Shah-i Zinda, “the Living King,” in the<br />
northern outskirts of Samarkand.It is the putative tomb of Qutham ibn<br />
Abbas, a cousin of the Prophet Muhammad, who according to tradition<br />
fell there as a martyr for the faith in 676 at the vanguard of an Arab<br />
army.Eventually his tomb generated two classical features of Islamic<br />
7 Or “parallel Islam,” a label favored by Sovietologists: parallel to the officially permitted religion<br />
controlled by the aforementioned Directorate of Muslims of Central Asia and Kazakhstan, itself<br />
controlled by the government.
Soviet Central Asia 247<br />
holy sites: its vicinity became a favorite final resting place of the elite,<br />
and the faithful of all levels made frequent pilgrimages to it (in fact, the<br />
people of Samarkand came twice a week, on Thursdays and Sundays).<br />
A series of magnificent mausolea arose there in the Timurid period, and<br />
the site eventually also attracted the attention of cultural historians and<br />
tourists.The Soviet authorities encouraged the tourists but discouraged<br />
the pilgrims; when the present author visited the site in the final years of<br />
Soviet rule before glasnost, however, the pilgrims gave every sign of outnumbering<br />
the tourists – this despite the presence of an office, at the<br />
entrance to the site, of the local chapter of “The Atheist” (Bezbozhnik).<br />
Another memorable site is the mazar of Shahimardan, situated in a<br />
small Uzbek enclave within Kyrgyzstan just south of the Uzbek cities of<br />
Fergana and Margilan.According to popular belief, Ali ibn Abi Talib,<br />
the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin, son-in-law, the fourth caliph, and the<br />
first Shii Imam, is buried there, hence the name: for Shahimardan, literally<br />
“The King (Shah) of men (mardan)” is one of his Persian titles.The<br />
fact that the story has no historical basis is irrelevant (Ali’s real – or at<br />
least principal – tomb is in the Iraqi city of Najaf), and the legend has<br />
parallels in many other similar sites associated, in popular imagination,<br />
with the burial of revered saints (the most famous legendary tomb of Ali,<br />
the reader may recall, is Mazar-i Sharif in Afghanistan).In 1929,<br />
Hamza Hakimzade Niyazi (b.1889), an Uzbek and a former jadid<br />
teacher and playwright who had joined the Bolshevik cause, agitated<br />
aginst the mazar and pilgrimage to it, but was murdered by “fanatical<br />
mullahs” – or so the official Soviet version said.The government<br />
destroyed the brick dome sheltering the tomb and punished the culprits,<br />
but the sanctuary was rebuilt a year later by the resilient natives; in 1940<br />
it was demolished again and replaced with a monument commemorating<br />
the Bolshevik martyr-saint and a “Museum of Atheism.” The site<br />
was then developed as a “Culture Park” and renamed (together with the<br />
neighboring town) Hamzaabad, “Hamza city.” 8 The murdered writerpropagandist<br />
thus entered the pantheon of Soviet hagiography, honored<br />
by countless recollections such as the dastan (legend, epic)<br />
“Shahimardan” composed in 1932 by his junior acquaintance and subsequent<br />
stalwart of official Uzbek letters, Hamid Alimjan (1909–44).It<br />
seems, however, that all the efforts to convert a Muslim shrine into a<br />
Bolshevik one, and a sanctuary of Islamic devotion into one of militant<br />
8 Khamzaabad in Cyrillic script if approached through Russian; in Uzbek Cyrillic it would be<br />
Hamzaobod.
248 A history of Inner Asia<br />
atheism, failed on the popular level.The faithful continued to flock there<br />
throughout the Soviet period, and in 1978 a Soviet scholar decried the<br />
importance of pilgrimage to the place “under the cover of tourism,”<br />
which included public prayers and sacrifices.The Uzbek writer K.<br />
Yashen even describes in his novel Hamza a Yasavi zikr performed there. 9<br />
All the government could do was to curb such manifestations of the true<br />
purpose of the ziyarats, devotional visits, on the more explicit or intellectual<br />
level.In this latter respect they have been fairly successful: to foreign<br />
or less initiated observers and visitors, the genuine nature of the site<br />
became unknown, and Hamzaabad acquired a public identity as a<br />
shrine worshiping a Bolshevik saint.The cycle is closing in the post-<br />
Soviet period, however: according to the British journalist C.Thubron,<br />
local old-timers now assert that Niyazi was killed not by fanatical<br />
mullahs but by two brothers avenging their sister who had been dishonored<br />
by the womanizing Communist. 10<br />
From among the multitude of other mazars in Central Asia, the following<br />
deserve at least a brief mention: Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi’s mausoleum<br />
in Yasi (Turkestan), Khwaja Baha al-Din Naqshband’s shrine<br />
near Bukhara, and Najm al-Din Kubra’s tomb near Urgench.These<br />
three Sufis, the reader may recall, founded the three great tariqas named<br />
after them in their Central Asian homeland.Their tombs subsequently<br />
gave rise to major shrines, mazars visited by the Muslim faithful down<br />
to our own day.As in the case of other such sites, the Soviet government<br />
tried different methods to combat these centers of enduring religious<br />
cults.Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi’s mausoleum was declared an<br />
important architectural monument and the government financed its<br />
restoration, while transforming the mazar complex into a dom otdykha (lit.<br />
“house of rest”) “something between an anti-religious museum and a<br />
culture park.” The mazar of Baha al-Din Naqshband, less impressive<br />
architecturally, received no such attention, and the government may<br />
have long been successful in isolating the sanctuary.Once glasnost set in,<br />
however, the shrine reasserted its role, and “in 1987, during abortive<br />
demonstrations, it was to this forbidden tomb that the Bukhara protesters<br />
had marched, as if to the last symbol of purity in their city.” As in<br />
its pre-modern past, the shrine of Baha al-Din Naqshband has again<br />
received veneration from the mighty and humble alike: in 1993 the<br />
9 Cited by Bennigsen, Le soufi et le commissaire, p.213; two chapters of the novel appeared in Nauka<br />
i religiya (1982), nos.5 and 7. 10 The Lost Heart of Asia, pp.242–43.
Soviet Central Asia 249<br />
President of Uzbekistan, Islam Karimov, appropriated state funds for<br />
refurbishing it, and a project sign standing outside the shrine in that<br />
year listed Egypt and Saudi Arabia as other contributors to its renovation.In<br />
1994, Mukhtar Abdullaev, an imam from the Naqshbandi<br />
shrine, was appointed mufti of Tashkent by the Uzbek government.<br />
Meanwhile the faithful of all hues now flock to it, as any visitor interested<br />
in the subject can witness.As for the tomb of Shaykh Najm al-<br />
Din Kubra near Old Urgench, it illustrates the characteristic vitality of<br />
such sites as mazars visited by large numbers of Muslim faithful even<br />
when the order they had founded has disappeared or has been<br />
absorbed by other orders.<br />
One could almost say that a curious kind of compromise, even dual<br />
personality, had appeared in Central Asia during these final years of the<br />
Soviet Union.On the formal, official level, little seemed to have changed<br />
since the days of Stalin.This was illustrated by the national anthems the<br />
republics were forced to adopt with their new constitutions of 1978.We<br />
shall quote the Uzbek anthem as an example, and suggest that it and its<br />
Kazakh, Turkmen etc.counterparts could hardly have been taken seriously,<br />
though the Central Asians had to bow in contemptuous and temporary<br />
submission.We shall then quote excerpts from two poems.One<br />
is by the Uzbek poet Mirtemir Tursunov (b.1910), published on New<br />
Year’s day of 1970 in the daily Sovet Ozbekistani. The other is by the<br />
Turkmen poet Magtymguly (1732–90), published as part of his collected<br />
works in 1983.Both were genuine hymns to their peoples and countries<br />
– in fact, their real national anthems.Here it was the masters in Moscow<br />
who had bowed to the inevitable; they had the power to force absurd<br />
anthems down the throats of their subjects, but became helpless in the<br />
face of the resurgence of genuine national feelings.Finally, yet another<br />
qualification may be needed.The Russian chauvinism or nationalism<br />
characteristic of the Soviet period may have been more the work of the<br />
political system than of the Russian people themselves.What mattered<br />
most to the Bolshevik masters in Moscow was control of their multinational<br />
empire, and for that they needed a common denominator that<br />
could only be the Russian language and the Russified identity of the<br />
subject peoples.Diversity could mean difference, dissidence, or secession,<br />
and had therefore to be rendered harmless by vaccinating it with<br />
the Russian component.Lust for power or fear of losing it in the outer<br />
marches, an ominous breach in the masters’ omnipotence that might<br />
then cause cracks at the center, was the motivation behind the “Russian”
250 A history of Inner Asia<br />
chauvinism of these dictators, as the ethnic background of the grimmest<br />
propagator of this policy, Joseph Stalin, shows.1978 was the year of a<br />
new constitution of the Soviet Union and of all the Union republics.<br />
The waves of terror were by then long past, and Central Asians, like<br />
the rest of Soviet citizenry except for the rather new and on the whole<br />
marginal appearance of active dissidents, had accepted a modus vivendi<br />
with the system.The compromise had become mutual.Moscow learned<br />
to live with the fact that the main non-Russian nations were there to stay,<br />
allowed them to cultivate their cultural patrimony within the prescribed<br />
norms and limits, and appeared confident that the union welded<br />
through this compromise was there to stay, too.It never allowed<br />
Cholpan to be included in the wave of posthumous rehabilitations that<br />
accompanied Khrushchev’s de-Stalinization campaign (Cholpan’s<br />
name, for example, does not even appear in the otherwise remarkably<br />
daring Uzbek encyclopedia), but Fitrat and Khojaev did receive a partial<br />
pardon, and while Moscow could not resurrect Törekul Aitmatov, his<br />
son Chingis’s writings became an apotheosis of the Kyrgyz people and<br />
homeland.The Uzbeks and other Central Asians must have seemed to<br />
justify Moscow’s confidence when the republics’ parliaments accepted<br />
new versions of the national anthems that accompanied the new constitutions.Here<br />
is the text of the Uzbek anthem:<br />
Salute to you, Russian people, our Great Brother! Greetings, our<br />
genius Lenin, dear one!<br />
You have shown us the road to freedom, The Uzbek has found glory<br />
in the Soviet homeland!<br />
The Party is the guide, dear Uzbekistan, You are a sun-bathed<br />
country, prosperous, developed!<br />
Your land is a treasure-trove, happiness is your lot, Fortune is your<br />
companion in the Soviet homeland!<br />
We did not see light in a sun-lit country, We lacked water alongside<br />
rivers.<br />
Dawn broke, Revolution, Lenin was the Guide, Peoples are thankful<br />
to Lenin the Guide!<br />
The garden of Communism – eternal springtime, Forever<br />
brotherhood – long live friendship!<br />
The flag of the Soviets is victorious, firmly implanted, The universe<br />
shines with light from this flag!<br />
This anthem, which opens with a thunderous salute to the Russian<br />
people, mentions Uzbekistan only in the second stanza.As for the Uzbek<br />
people, their name appears in the somewhat condescending singular.It
Soviet Central Asia 251<br />
is an insult to the Uzbeks, and a display of the arrogant pretense of<br />
Communist ideology.The reversal of values and facts reaches its peak<br />
here: Instead of being a hymn to the Uzbek people, it is a hymn glorifying<br />
the Russians (while claiming to be the Uzbeks’ anthem); instead of<br />
acknowledging the fact that Uzbekistan was conquered by Tsarist Russia<br />
and reconquered by Bolshevik Russia, it states that Russia’s dictator<br />
showed the Uzbeks the road to freedom; instead of admitting that economic<br />
exploitation with colonial overtones has caused a catastrophic<br />
abuse of water resources, it states that the Revolution and Lenin provided<br />
the Uzbeks with water.The pretense is equally strident: terms like<br />
“eternal” and “universe” linked to Communism are symptomatic of this<br />
ideology’s character as an intolerant, all-embracing religion.<br />
The anthems of the other four Central Asian republics are identical<br />
in their central theme: glorification of Russia and Communism.These<br />
anthems could hardly have been taken seriously by the Central Asians,<br />
and they are relevant only as demonstrations of the special combination<br />
of hypocrisy and compromise characteristic of the system on the eve of<br />
its dissolution.<br />
Few, if any, realized how doomed this compromise was destined to be.<br />
But the signs were there, and the aforementioned poems by Mirtemir<br />
and Magtymguly, rather than the official anthems, expressed the<br />
Central Asians’ real feelings.First, the Uzbek poem entitled “Thou,<br />
Uzbekistan!”: 11<br />
I wished to speak about happiness,<br />
to sing a joyous ode,<br />
To think of tomorrow and today,<br />
To hold a fabulous feast;<br />
In my eyes thou appearst,<br />
Thou at last art the one, the eternal object of learning,<br />
Thou, Uzbekistan.<br />
Child of toil art thou, sound of heart,<br />
And the enviers are distraught and downcast,<br />
with every year;<br />
At every step art thou paradise, an Eden, a garden,<br />
Thy nights unending myriads of candelabra,<br />
Thou art despot to enemy, solace to friend,<br />
Danger afar, art thou a bower of calm,<br />
Thou, Uzbekistan.<br />
11 Quoted by Critchlow, Nationalism in Uzbekistan, pp.22–24.
252 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Thy hand holds the key to treasures of riches,<br />
In thy garden and desert a happy year’s song,<br />
Left and right thy gold and thy silk;<br />
How many the peoples enrapt in thy path,<br />
Thou art fruit and wine and water and cake,<br />
Thou art twin rivers of love,<br />
Thou, Uzbekistan.<br />
Thou art thine own machine builder, thine own livestock breeder,<br />
Thine own scholar, thine own cultural worker.<br />
Thou art volunteer soldier, noble guide,<br />
A storehouse of cotton priceless, without peer,<br />
Thy soul Lenin’s child forever,<br />
Thou, Uzbekistan!<br />
Like Aitmatov and Qodirov, Mirtemir was a member of the Communist<br />
Party, and like all of his compatriots who did not wish to become needless<br />
martyrs, he was paying the dues to the Caesar in Moscow and his<br />
deputies in Central Asia.The ritual reference to Lenin (and, in the case<br />
of an Uzbek, to cotton) was a standard means of evading the everpresent<br />
danger of the Inquisition.<br />
Here are a few excerpts from the Turkmen poem:<br />
Between the Oxus River and the Caspian, over the desert blows the<br />
Turkmen’s gale.<br />
The rose-bud, the black pupil of my eye – The Turkmen’s torrent<br />
descends from the black mountain.<br />
God has raised him and placed him under His shadow, his herds and<br />
flocks range over the steppe.<br />
Blossoms of many hues crowd his green summer pasture – the<br />
Turkmen’s steppe drowns in basil’s scent.<br />
His fair maidens appear clad in red and green, spreading their<br />
ambergris-like fragrance.<br />
Begs and elders are the lords of the land – guardians of the Turkmen’s<br />
beautiful homeland.<br />
He is a warrior’s son, a warrior was his father; Goroghli is his brother,<br />
inebriated are his senses;<br />
Should foes pursue him in mountains or plains – they could not take<br />
the Turkmen, the tiger’s son, alive.<br />
…Tribes are like brothers, clans are friends; their fate is not adverse,<br />
they are God’s rays.<br />
When warriors mount their horses, it is for battle – The Turkmen sets<br />
out against the foe!
Soviet Central Asia 253<br />
He sets out in high spirits, his heart is not faint; he splits the<br />
mountains, his road is not blocked.<br />
My eye’s glance and heart’s pleasure seek no other scenes –<br />
Magtymguly speaks the Turkmen’s tongue! 12<br />
The Soviet government obviously considered such expressions of<br />
national feelings harmless, because the people who harbored them also<br />
gave impression of accepting their national anthems and all the other<br />
paraphernalia of Soviet patriotism imposed by Moscow.One can<br />
suspect, however, that if this poem had been composed by a living<br />
Turkmen, the Inquisition would not have spared him unless some kind<br />
of homage to Lenin or Russia had been tagged on to it.Magtymguly<br />
could “get away with it” because he was long dead, and his publishers<br />
could too because official Soviet historiography endeavored to cast some<br />
of his poems as a protest against “feudal” or “obscurantist Islamic” elements.<br />
Things might indeed have continued in the same manner for yet<br />
another generation if it hadn’t been for the historical accident (or inevitability?)<br />
of Mikhail Gorbachev.<br />
12 W.Feldman, “Interpreting the poetry of Makhtumquli,” in Jo-Ann Gross (ed.), Muslims in Central<br />
Asia: Expressions of identity and change (Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1992), pp.<br />
167–89 (includes the Turkmen text and English translation).The Turkmen text of the poem has<br />
also been included in Zindaginamah va barguzidah-i ashar-i Makhtumquli Firaghi (Biography and selection<br />
of poems of Makhtumquli Firaghi, in Persian), ed.Abd al-Rahman Dihji (Tehran,<br />
1373/1994), pp.227–28 (Arabic script).
chapter eighteen<br />
Central Asia becomes independent<br />
By the time Gorbachev became First Secretary of the Communist Party<br />
of the Soviet Union in 1985, people knew that his country had serious<br />
economic, social, and perhaps even military problems.The inherent<br />
flaws of the system had begun to sap its strength to a point where some<br />
of its leaders started wondering whether modifications were necessary,<br />
and if so, what kind and to what extent.<br />
One problem was corruption among high officials.For some reason<br />
this corruption turned out to be especially rampant in Central Asia, and<br />
worst in Uzbekistan.Sharaf Rashidov (1917–83) was since 1959 First<br />
Secretary of the republic’s Communist Party, and in 1961 Moscow<br />
showed its trust in this Uzbek by elevating him to membership in the<br />
system’s highest political aristocracy, the CC CPSU (Central Committee<br />
of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union).He retained both posts<br />
until his death in 1983, and when he died he was buried with honors<br />
comparable only to those of his role models, Lenin and Stalin: his body<br />
was placed in a mausoleum built for that purpose on the Uzbek capital’s<br />
main square.<br />
Rashidov of course had to earn Moscow’s trust, and there was ample<br />
opportunity to do that.His record as a perfect Party member was impeccable,<br />
and the rulers in the Soviet capital knew that they could count on<br />
his cooperation in their control of Uzbekistan as an obedient republic.<br />
He knew what they wanted above anything else: (Communist) law and<br />
order and stability in Uzbekistan, and as much cotton as possible from<br />
it.He was their man on both counts, and had no qualms if that meant<br />
a surrender of Uzbek national will and spiritual as well as material<br />
values to Moscow, and a catastrophic destruction of the country’s environment<br />
and people’s health.<br />
The result was a curiously split personality and an elusive local ruling<br />
elite, characteristic of Central Asian leadership in the final decades of<br />
Soviet rule.Rashidov gained enormous power in Uzbekistan, by build-<br />
254
Central Asia becomes independent 255<br />
ing up a political and bureaucratic-managerial infrastructure loyal to<br />
him and benefiting from this association.These people became the<br />
country’s privileged class.Their privileges were many and fundamental,<br />
and sharply separated them from the common people, but also from<br />
their Russian masters: for a special feature that accompanied this process<br />
was the “Uzbekization” (or “Kazakhization,” etc.) of the political and<br />
bureaucratic infrastructure of the Central Asian republics.At first sight<br />
this could be viewed as a reappearance of the aforementioned developments<br />
of the 1920s: “national communism” and “nativization” (korenizatsiya).On<br />
a closer look, however, we see a striking difference:<br />
champions of national Communism (like the Kazakh Ryskulov or<br />
Uzbek Khojaev) were true Central Asian patriots who took Moscow’s<br />
manifesto of 1917 about self-determination seriously; and the representatives<br />
of the “native working class” were reluctantly recruited into the<br />
ranks of the Party membership and bureaucracy by the province’s<br />
Russian directorate to satisfy Moscow’s idea of “nativization.” Rashidov<br />
and his peers and cohorts, on the other hand, were anything but patriots,<br />
and they came to their position of power and comfort by their own<br />
initiative and political virtuosity, though at the price of absolute subordination<br />
to Moscow and disregard of the true interests of their countries.The<br />
national Communists of the 1920s paid for their error with<br />
their lives or disappearance in the Gulag a decade later; they were joined<br />
by some of the recruits of the “nativization” years, who too had come<br />
to believe that a sincere dialogue with Moscow about the genuine interests<br />
of their native land and people was possible.Rashidov and his<br />
Uzbek clansmen made no such mistakes, and the rewards were great.<br />
Rashidov’s long rule of Uzbekistan (1959–83) coincided with several<br />
power shifts in Moscow, from Khrushchev to Brezhnev, Andropov, and<br />
Chernenko, and he had the good luck to die before the accession of<br />
Gorbachev.In his eagerness to serve his masters, he even outdid their<br />
demands: while the planners in Moscow set the price of cotton delivered<br />
by Uzbekistan below its international market value, Rashidov proposed<br />
to lower the price even further, and when Moscow stipulated how<br />
much cotton Uzbekistan should deliver, he promised an even larger<br />
quantity, and the ensuing figures and statistics showed that he had kept<br />
his word.<br />
Especially in Brezhnev’s time the empire basked in the sunlight of this<br />
“international” cooperation. Mutatis mutandis, the situation was similar in<br />
the other Central Asian republics.In neighboring Kazakhstan,<br />
Dinmukhamed Kunaev (b.1911) had risen to a similar pinnacle of
256 A history of Inner Asia<br />
power and comfort and through similar methods.In 1964 he became<br />
First Secretary of the Communist Party of Kazakhstan, and in 1971 he<br />
also entered the Politburo of the CC CPSU, and held those posts until<br />
1986.Like Rashidov in Uzbekistan, Kunaev in his republic gradually<br />
acquired enormous authority by building up a network of politicians<br />
and bureaucrats who owed their positions of power and comfort to him.<br />
And again, most of these people were “natives,” in this instance<br />
Kazakhs.What is more, many belonged to the Horde of which Kunaev<br />
was a member, the Greater Horde (a social phenomenon that according<br />
to official theory had long been swept away by the new Soviet Order).<br />
One of the results was that while the Kazakhs still only had a plurality<br />
in the republic, they came to occupy the majority of seats in the republic’s<br />
parliament, the Supreme Soviet.Like Kunaev himself, most of these<br />
deputies were of course members of the Communist Party, and the rest<br />
equally loyal non-affiliates.One can surmise that the Soviet government<br />
was fully aware of this surge of native power in Kazakhstan, but preferred<br />
to look the other way, because otherwise things were under its<br />
complete control, or seemed to be.Kunaev and his cohorts never failed<br />
to do Moscow’s bidding and suffer its doings, even if it meant destroying<br />
the country’s environment and people’s health through nuclear tests<br />
in the area of Semipalatinsk, or, on a less lethal level, a continuation of<br />
the semi-colonial relationship fashioned to suit Russia rather than<br />
Kazakhstan.The Kazakh leaders of the final Soviet era were no nationalists<br />
or patriots, but within the parameter of the permissible they were<br />
thoroughly Kazakh: the family, the clan, the tribe, the Horde had traditionally<br />
been the avenues through which power and positions of comfort<br />
were distributed, and by the time Kunaev became the nation’s number<br />
one Communist, these traditions had reasserted themselves despite the<br />
strictures imposed by Moscow.Russians and other non-Kazakh citizens<br />
of Kazakhstan were, in a sense, left out in the cold.<br />
Moscow, we have said, appeared satisfied with this state of affairs, but<br />
by the time Brezhnev had died and his first successors lamely grappled<br />
with the unwieldy empire, doubts must have begun to creep into the<br />
minds of some people whose concern about the probity of their country<br />
and the survivability of the system surpassed the satisfaction they drew<br />
from their own power and comfort.These doubts encompassed a vast<br />
array of flaws, but problems in Central Asia were a special and ultimately<br />
contradictory part of them.<br />
The doubts burst into the open only with the accession of Mikhail<br />
Gorbachev to the captainship of the Soviet Union.More lucid and
Central Asia becomes independent 257<br />
honest than his predecessors, he realized that his country and political<br />
faith might lose the contest with the Western world and capitalism unless<br />
they reformed themselves.The ideological hostility and closure of the<br />
Soviet Union to the West was one of the chief causes of its growing stagnation.This<br />
stagnation included those aspects that must have mattered<br />
most especially to the military – the rapidly evolving electronic technology.President<br />
Reagan’s “Star Wars” gave Gorbachev the necessary tool<br />
with which to persuade his peers that a “restructuring,” perestroika, was<br />
necessary if they wanted their system to survive.This restructuring<br />
included an unprecedented openness and dismantling of at least a part<br />
of the ideological wall erected along the Soviet frontier.It might be interesting<br />
to compare the Ottoman and Soviet empires with respect to their<br />
stagnation and its causes, the remedies sought by their reformers, and<br />
the ultimate dissolution of these empires and of their ideologies.<br />
The challenge was enormous, and Gorbachev’s answer included a<br />
major contradiction: this statesman, a sincere Communist, wanted to<br />
save Communism by grafting a strong dose of humanism and openness<br />
onto it, something no one had tried before.The combination proved to<br />
be a utopian idea, and brought about the collapse of the whole system<br />
years, perhaps decades, before this process might otherwise have come<br />
to fruition.<br />
The contradiction took on a special form in Central Asia, however.<br />
By the time Mikhail Gorbachev succeeded Konstantin Chernenko, it<br />
was no secret that something was wrong especially in the republic of<br />
Uzbekistan.People had discovered that the figures showing the quantity<br />
of cotton shipped to Russia did not quite tally with the actual quantity,<br />
and that this falsification had reached a vast scale and had<br />
especially mushroomed in the Brezhnev era.Moreover, those masterminding<br />
this deception had included some of the highest officials –<br />
Rashidov himself, and they had coopted people at the center like<br />
Brezhnev’s son-in-law, Yuriy Churbanov.The scandal had generated<br />
investigations and firings and prison terms already under Andropov, but<br />
Gorbachev widened the clean-up by launching a massive campaign<br />
against “corruption.” Corruption in this context is perhaps an inaccurate<br />
term, for it was spawned by a system and relationship which in<br />
themselves were corrupt.What was rashidovshchina, a term devised for<br />
the wily bureaucrats’ gimmicks to line their pockets or promote their<br />
nephews, in comparison with the environmental blight spread by<br />
Moscow’s policies in Central Asia? What was their petty pilfery in comparison<br />
with the grand larceny perpetrated by the center of the empire,
258 A history of Inner Asia<br />
as it dictated the below-the-market prices paid for the cotton and other<br />
commodities hauled away from the region? 1<br />
The Central Asians had to bow to Moscow’s grand-scale dictates, but,<br />
as we have said, the fortunate elite was rewarded by access to positions<br />
of local power, prestige, handsome salaries and perks through a network<br />
of acquaintances and special relationships.These ties were intimately<br />
related to family, clan, locality, or tribal affiliations, in other words, to the<br />
native element of Soviet society.To his consternation, Gorbachev realized<br />
that the Soviet state was faced with what somehow looked like<br />
nationalism, yet virtually all of the indigenous actors were Communists<br />
professing unflinching loyalty to Moscow.We have already pointed out<br />
that in contrast to their predecessors of the 1920s, this new brand of<br />
national Communists were no nationalists, and that they were routinely<br />
sacrificing the interests of their countries in order to advance their own<br />
careers.They had learnt how to do it, and since the 1960s were playing<br />
this card with increasing virtuosity, often coopting Russians and other<br />
Europeans into their schemes but not quite letting them penetrate the<br />
periphery of their ethnic infrastructure.Rashidov and Kunaev were past<br />
masters in this game, but they were only the best noticed examples of a<br />
process that was spreading through the power structure of the Soviet<br />
empire in Central Asia.But there was worse.Gorbachev and his comrades<br />
in Moscow realized that their Uzbek comrades, however corrupt,<br />
were less alarming than those Central Asians who had somehow begun<br />
to reveal an independent national spirit, despite all the damnations of<br />
nationalism and admonitions that “internationalism” was the supreme<br />
form of patriotism incumbent on every Soviet citizen.This new nationalism<br />
was real and surging fast, but before glasnost it could manifest itself<br />
only indirectly and cautiously.Its standardbearers were the native intellectuals<br />
and professionals; their ranks were growing, and they ended up<br />
representing an alternative elite to that of the Communist politicians<br />
and bureaucrats.We have suggested that up to a point the two groups<br />
overlapped each other.Some of the politicians and bureaucrats were no<br />
doubt at times trying to defend not only their personal interests but also<br />
those of their countries; and the intellectuals and professionals had to<br />
play the Communist card just to be able to function.Mirtemir, the<br />
1 Many Russians would of course point out that the below-the-market pricing was mutual, and that<br />
in some respects Central Asia was more a burden than an asset to the Russian economy.<br />
Adequately documented studies of this question remain to be done; in my view, the environmental<br />
blight visited on Central Asia through wholesale abuse of natural resources, now fully revealed,<br />
is the most damning aspect of the relationship.
Central Asia becomes independent 259<br />
author of the poem “Thou, Uzbekistan!,” was a member of the<br />
Communist Party, and he made sure to mention Lenin at the end of the<br />
eloquent hymn to his country as a safeguard against the Inquisition.The<br />
year was 1970, the Prague Spring of 1968 seemed to be safely tucked<br />
away in the dustbin of history, and Mirtemir went as far as an Uzbek<br />
could possibly go in that period.What he could not do was to challenge<br />
Moscow to cease the colonial exploitation of his country, to stop destroying<br />
its environment and people’s health, to let the Uzbeks write the real<br />
history of their country.Had he done that, the KGB would have taken<br />
care of the rest.As it was, he was one of the many who had begun to<br />
rekindle the flame of the national spirit.Frontal attack had to wait for<br />
glasnost and perestroika.<br />
That time came when in the core of Soviet society and state<br />
Gorbachev set in motion the unprecedented program of reforms that<br />
became famous as perestroika (restructuring; qayta quruu in Uzbek) and<br />
glasnost (openness [of expression and criticism]; ochiqliq in Uzbek).To be<br />
sure, criticism (and self-criticism, a particularly favorite device of the<br />
system) had been a standard feature of the Communist Party and Soviet<br />
state, but there was a sharp difference between the two phases.Before<br />
Gorbachev, criticism meant that the criticized were not living up to the<br />
demands and norms of Marxism-Leninism, and the remedy was even<br />
more Marxism-Leninism; those few who dared to propose different remedies<br />
quickly ended up in the Gulag.The two words so characteristic of<br />
the Gorbachev era had previously not been used as technical terms; their<br />
new use was a hint that something had changed.Most observers would<br />
undoubtedly agree on that, and even on the effects of that change, but<br />
what its causes, nature, and goals exactly meant is a matter of controversy.<br />
For an explanation we should go back to the revolution’s very nature,<br />
or even to its initiator’s personality.The unprecedented element, absent<br />
from all earlier attempts at reform, was the aforementioned dose of<br />
humanism injected by Gorbachev into the system.The notorious coercive<br />
apparatus lost its former punch, and the spontaneous energies of<br />
human nature began to act all over the empire and in a variety of ways.<br />
In Russia, such heresies as proposals of a market economy, political pluralism,<br />
practice of religion, or workers’ strikes were no longer a guarantee<br />
of a trip to Gulag; in Berlin, the Wall came down; in Czechoslovakia,<br />
the Prague Spring of 1968 had a victorious rebirth in the Velvet<br />
Revolution of 1989; and in Central Asia, the indigenous peoples<br />
reached for their national liberation for the first time since their defeat
260 A history of Inner Asia<br />
of 1917–18.Gorbachev’s efforts to save Communism and the Soviet<br />
empire failed because the system itself was beyond redemption, and we<br />
should not succumb to the temptation to berate him for his failures in<br />
practically every direction, from fumbling attempts to revamp the Soviet<br />
economy to grasping that Communism was bankrupt to trying his hand<br />
at politics in post-Soviet Russia.Gorbachev’s great merit rests in the fact<br />
that he had tried to humanize the Soviet system.This attempt unleashed<br />
forces that brought about the “evil empire’s” collapse sooner and less<br />
bloodily than had been anticipated and, above all, removed the specter<br />
of a nuclear war. 2<br />
In Central Asia, neither the severity of the fight against “corruption,”<br />
nor the subsequently inconclusive results of the liberation there, should<br />
mislead us into underestimating this liberation’s genesis and victory.The<br />
repression may have succeeded where it was “justified” (and where, paradoxically,<br />
it may have mattered the least): purges of officials who were<br />
truly corrupt within the Soviet system by not being “honest” (although<br />
they almost by definition were “loyal” to the system), defrauding the<br />
state, creating networks of vested interests, fostering cults of personality<br />
(of party bosses) on a whole gamut of levels.Many of these people were<br />
punished, there were even some death sentences.The main object of the<br />
repression – bridling the resurgence of nationalism – proved a dismal<br />
failure, however.The Central Asians, no longer afraid of the “restructured”<br />
comrades in Moscow and of the defanged KGB, vigorously came<br />
forth defending their national heritage, reminding Russia of her colonial<br />
conquest, accusing her of maintaining a colonial domination, and<br />
sounding alarm at the destruction of the Central Asian environment<br />
and of people’s health.This revolution charted its own course and<br />
timetable in Central Asia, and some of that has been paradoxical or<br />
contradictory.<br />
The process was similar in all the five republics (with the partial exception<br />
of Tajikistan), and Kazakhstan presents perhaps the most graphic<br />
example.When in 1986 Gorbachev had fired the Kazakh Kunaev and<br />
replaced him with the Russian Kolbin, this satrap set about cleaning the<br />
house with all the energy and speed expected of him.People were<br />
arrested, fired, demoted, replaced with newcomers who often were<br />
neither members of the Great Horde nor even Kazakhs, “honesty”<br />
2 A fascinating illustration of this process is a documentary on Ronald Reagan and his presidency<br />
televised in February 1998.The American president’s merit was equally great, and both statesmen,<br />
who from adversaries became friends, deserved the Nobel Peace prize (Gorbachev was<br />
awarded his in 1990).
Central Asia becomes independent 261<br />
began to be restored.What had not been expected, however, was the<br />
Kazakhs’ reaction.In December 1986 great numbers of protesters,<br />
mainly young people, gathered on the main square of Almaty and<br />
staged demonstrations against Kolbin and what was viewed as an assault<br />
on their nationality.The Soviet state still wielded enough power (glasnost<br />
was only just starting) to carry out a crackdown on the demonstrators<br />
Some people were killed (as usual, official and unofficial figures differ),<br />
many others were arrested, and peace was restored.What Kolbin did<br />
not and probably could not do, however, was to pass beyond the<br />
identifiable and legally definable “corruption” or mass demonstrations<br />
and tackle the fait accompli of a largely “Kazakhized” legislature and<br />
political-bureaucratic infrastructure, and a Kazakh public no longer<br />
afraid of the KGB.Far from bowing to Gorbachev’s demands of scaling<br />
down their ethnic resurgence, they accelerated it, and by 1989 Moscow<br />
surrendered: it recalled Gennadiy Kolbin and replaced him with the<br />
Kazakh Nursultan Nazarbaev, and stood by helpless as it watched<br />
the Kazakh Supreme Soviet pass a motion proclaiming Kazakh to be<br />
the official language of the republic.This motion was chiefly theoretical,<br />
for even its authors knew that in most situations of public life Russian<br />
would for the time being remain the only viable medium of communication,<br />
but its symbolic and long-range importance was undeniable.<br />
Meanwhile perestroika and glasnost gained their own momentum at the<br />
center of the USSR and all over the empire, forging ahead far beyond<br />
what Gorbachev had wished or expected.By 1990, the destinies of<br />
Central Asia began to be fashioned more along the Baltic Sea or in<br />
Ukraine than on its home ground.Spearheaded by the three Baltic<br />
republics, the drive for independence burst forth among the non-<br />
Russian members of the Union with an intensity that baffled Gorbachev<br />
and carried the rest along.The process was consummated by the end of<br />
1991, when all the five republics of Central Asia, almost against the will<br />
of their political elites, were fully independent states, left to their own<br />
devices how to fashion their future.<br />
The first stage of this process occurred in 1989 and 1990 with the<br />
proclamation, by the legislature of each republic, of its respective idiom<br />
as the official language, and, by three of the five, of their sovereignty:<br />
Turkmenistan on 22 August, Tajikistan on 25 August, Kazakhstan on 25<br />
October 1990.<br />
The second stage came in March 1991, when a referendum was held<br />
throughout the Soviet Union whether to preserve its existing structure,<br />
to modify it, or to dissolve it.Each of the five Central Asian republics
262 A history of Inner Asia<br />
overwhelmigly voted to preserve the Soviet Union (97 percent on the<br />
average).Here we can see one of the aforementioned contradictions of<br />
the liberation process.We have mentioned the explicitly or implicitly<br />
defiant stance Central Asians of all hues – from Communist Party stalwarts<br />
to genuine patriots – had assumed against Moscow’s crackdown.<br />
On that level they were victorious, despite the purges of “corrupt”<br />
officials, and they were united in this victory.When it came to the question<br />
of full-fledged independence, however, things became complicated.<br />
The intellectuals and independent professionals made no secret about<br />
their wish to see their countries fully independent.However, the Party<br />
professionals and government bureaucrats who had survived the purges<br />
– and they were, after all, the vast majority – knew they owed their privileges<br />
and security to the Soviet system, and did not want to rock the boat<br />
too much.Consequently they availed themselves of the still formidable<br />
control and propaganda apparatus of the state to ensure the outcome of<br />
the referendum.They had indeed kept their options open by the time<br />
the third and final stage of liberation dawned over Central Asia.<br />
20 August 1991 was the day when in Moscow Russia and the other<br />
republics that had approved the Union’s modified preservation were to<br />
sign the new pact.On the 19th, however, the notorious coup staged by<br />
a junta of generals and politicians proclaimed its seizure of power, dismissal<br />
of Gorbachev who was vacationing in the Crimea, and cancellation<br />
of the whole array of perestroika measures and glasnost freedoms.The<br />
rest is well known: Boris Yeltsin’s and his supporters’ triumphant<br />
defiance from the Russian Chamber of Deputies, Gorbachev’s return,<br />
the collapse of the coup, and the rapid dissolution of the Soviet Union.<br />
In Central Asia, Kyrgyzstan and Uzbekistan declared independence on<br />
31 August, Tajikistan on 9 September, Turkmenistan on 27 October,<br />
and Kazakhstan on 16 December.History has drawn the logical conclusion<br />
of a process conceived with the 1924 National Delimitation.
chapter nineteen<br />
Sinkiang as part of China<br />
Sinkiang came under Chinese rule, as we have seen, in 1758 with the<br />
defeat of the Jungar Mongols.The arrangement was analogous to that<br />
with Outer Mongolia, for the region became a possession of the<br />
Manchu Dynasty rather than being integrated into the empire as one<br />
more province.This had two important effects: the native population,<br />
mostly Muslim and Turkic-speaking after the virtual extermination of<br />
the Mongol population in Jungaria, retained a considerable degree of<br />
self-rule at all but the highest levels, and no immigration from China<br />
proper was allowed.<br />
The Manchus followed the natural configuration of the conquered<br />
territory by dividing its administration into Pei Lu and Nan Lu, the<br />
aforementioned division of the province into a northern and southern<br />
segment.The amban or lieutenant-governor of the former resided at<br />
Urumchi, that of the latter at Yarkand; both halves were under the governor-general<br />
whose residence, Kulja (Yi-ning or Ining in Chinese), was<br />
founded by the Manchus near the remnants of the historic city of<br />
Almaliq on the Ili river.Peace and prosperity marked the first decades of<br />
this benign colonial rule, and in fact continued for over a century despite<br />
increasing flare-ups of native unrest in Nan Lu, often fomented by spiritual<br />
or relational descendants of seventeenth-century Khwajas (events<br />
of 1825, 1830, 1846, and 1857).These disturbances received some<br />
support from the khanate of Khoqand, whose rulers, although on occasion<br />
opportunely recognizing a vague form of Chinese suzerainty,<br />
obtained special privileges in western Sinkiang all the way to the river<br />
and city of Aksu: trading advantages for its merchants and even the right<br />
to collect certain taxes were among these.On the whole, however, the<br />
khans of Khoqand did not entertain further ambitions to the east of the<br />
Tianshan mountains; their expansionist mood looked west and north,<br />
where it entangled them, as we have seen, in wars with the emir of<br />
Bukhara and, ultimately, with Russia.<br />
263
Sinkiang<br />
(Chinese Turkestan)<br />
RUSSIAN<br />
FEDERATION<br />
Irtysh R.<br />
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I<br />
Kobdo<br />
L.<br />
Zaysan<br />
M O N G O L I A<br />
railroad<br />
Manas<br />
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I<br />
K A Z A K H S T A N<br />
Black Irtysh R.<br />
Aktogay<br />
Kulja<br />
Hami<br />
Urumchi<br />
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I<br />
L.<br />
Balkhash<br />
Ili R.<br />
Almaty<br />
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I<br />
Turfan<br />
Bishkek<br />
KYRGYZSTAN<br />
Beijing<br />
Tarim R.<br />
C H I N A<br />
Kashgar<br />
TAJIKISTAN<br />
Yarkand<br />
Khotan<br />
AFGHANISTAN<br />
PAKISTAN<br />
T I B E T<br />
(CHINA)<br />
KASHMIR<br />
(INDIA)<br />
Map 7 Sinkiang (Chinese Turkestan)
Sinkiang as part of China 265<br />
A prominent participant in Khoqand’s expeditions and politics was<br />
one Muhammad Yaqub Beg (1820–77), a native of Fergana.His career<br />
began promisingly when in 1851 he was appointed governor of the<br />
Syrdarya town of Akmeshit.He soon developed problems with<br />
Khudayar Khan, however – for reasons that are not clear but that may<br />
have stemmed from his inability to withstand the Russian onslaught on<br />
the town in 1853 – and had to flee to Bukhara.He was eventually pardoned<br />
and could return to Khoqand, and in 1865 the Khan sent him to<br />
Kashgar as aide to Buzruq or Buzurg Khan, a khwaja (Sufi shaykh of the<br />
Naqshbandi order.We have mentioned the sad end of the last khwajas<br />
to rule Kashgaria, the Aqtaghliq brothers Burhan at Kashgar and Jahan<br />
or Jan at Yarkand, in 1759; other descendants of Aqtaghliq and<br />
Qarataghliq khwajas had survived in the khanate of Khoqand and<br />
fomented – or tried to exploit – the aforementioned uprisings against<br />
Manchu rule in Kashgaria) who was launching yet another attempt at<br />
restoring theocracy in western Sinkiang.Unlike earlier such attempts,<br />
this time the Manchus did not quash it forthwith because of a rebellion<br />
that had erupted in 1862 among the Chinese Muslims of Kansu, thus<br />
creating a barrier between China proper and Sinkiang.Yaqub Beg<br />
proved a stronger personality than the khwaja he had come to serve, for<br />
by 1867 he had shoved him aside and established himself as the ruler of<br />
an Islamic state.<br />
He at first professed to be a vassal of the khans of Khoqand, contenting<br />
himself with the title of “Ataliq Ghazi,” but later he claimed full<br />
independence and changed his title to “Yaqub Beg Badawlat” (“Yaqub<br />
Beg, [Blessed] with [divine] auspiciousness”).The coins struck in the<br />
mint of Kashgar between 1867 and 1873 still bore the legend “Struck<br />
in the Mint of Khoqand” and the name of Malla Khan (1858–62), but<br />
then the legend was changed to “Struck in the Mint of Kashgar, the<br />
Capital” and bore the name of the Ottoman sultan Abdülaziz.<br />
His realm, often referred to in the sources as Yettishahr (“Heptapolis,”<br />
the seven cities being Kashgar, Khotan, Yarkand, Yangihisar, Aksu,<br />
Kucha, and Korla), lasted until 1877 and attracted considerable international<br />
attention, especially from Great Britain, Russia, and the Ottoman<br />
empire.The reason lay in the fact that by then the almost romantic<br />
“Great Game,” the gigantic though perhaps overblown contest between<br />
Russia and Britain for the control of Inner Asia, was gaining momentum:<br />
the British conquered Punjab in 1849; the Russians, taking Tashkent in<br />
1865 and Samarkand in 1868, were established in Transoxania and<br />
showed appetite for more; meanwhile, the collapse of Manchu rule in
266 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Sinkiang created a power vacuum there that further exacerbated the<br />
sparring of the two colonial empires.Russia and Britain wished to avoid<br />
a conflict but felt that a war might have to be fought if either of them<br />
advanced too brashly into a territory like Sinkiang; a minor native ruler<br />
thus appeared as a welcome compromise, especially to the British, who<br />
quickly tried to strengthen him and gain his friendship.<br />
Yaqub Beg himself also preferred the British alliance to a Russian one,<br />
no doubt because Russia, thanks to her geopolitical and logistical advantage,<br />
was a potentially far more dangerous friend.He received two<br />
British missions, of which the second, led by Douglas Forsyth in 1874,<br />
was especially memorable and established diplomatic relations between<br />
Kashgar and British India.Meanwhile Yaqub Beg, who had tried to give<br />
Russia the cold shoulder and even to dispute certain border posts, realized<br />
the peril of such intransigence and made concessions with farreaching<br />
consequences for the whole province: renewal of Russia’s right,<br />
gained as early as 1860, to have a consulate in Kashgar, and greater<br />
freedom for the Tsar’s subjects to trade in the region.Another sign of<br />
Russia’s position of strength was her occupation of the Ili area in<br />
response to Yaqub Beg’s seizure of Urumchi in 1870; the ostensible<br />
reason was the Tsar’s fear that his subjects, visiting Kulja and other<br />
places in the region, or even residing there, might suffer harm if fighting<br />
reached those quarters.By this clever move, the Russians acquired a strategically<br />
important area, a historic gateway to Sinkiang’s Bei Lu and<br />
farther east which some observers have compared to the Khyber Pass<br />
between British India and Afghanistan.All in all, the Russians extracted<br />
from Yaqub Beg concessions superior to those won by the British, while<br />
treating him with a mixture of condescension and threats.<br />
The most interesting, though perhaps the least effective, of the<br />
Kashgar ruler’s foreign contacts were those with the Ottoman sultan.<br />
Yaqub Beg claimed to rule in the name of Islam, and such visitors as<br />
Forsyth do confirm the reality of this claim: the regime was rigorously<br />
Islamic, with the sharia and religious precepts being applied and enforced<br />
to the point where the Muslim population complained and fondly<br />
remembered the days of Chinese rule.Yaqub Beg was probably too<br />
well-informed and realistic to expect effective military help from the<br />
Ottomans, although some advisers and weapons were indeed sent to<br />
him from Turkey; the support he hoped for and received was moral, for<br />
the sultan enjoyed the prestige of being the leader of the Muslim world,<br />
whose letter of investiture did make a difference.Thus in 1873 the<br />
Kashgar ruler sent his nephew Sayyid Yaqub Khan Tora to Istanbul,
Sinkiang as part of China 267<br />
and the envoy brought back a document calling Yaqub Beg Amir al-<br />
Muminin, “Commander of the Faithful.” This once prestigious title,<br />
which used to be reserved for the Caliph, seems despite its subsequent<br />
inflation to have truly consolidated the new Islamic state when in 1874<br />
the envoy returned via India, with Douglas Forsyth’s mission, to<br />
Kashgar.<br />
A mere three years later, however, Yaqub Beg was defeated by the<br />
Chinese general Tso Tsung-t’ang in two battles near Turfan and<br />
Urumchi, and died, probably of a stroke, in May 1877 at Korla, while<br />
retreating with the remainder of his troops toward Yarkand.This turn<br />
of events was probably more a result of the fragility of the Kashgar<br />
ruler’s kingdom than of China’s might, although the conquering<br />
general’s ability and determination did play a catalytic role in the<br />
Chinese victory.Having acquitted himself well in his charge to quell the<br />
uprising of the Hui (Chinese-speaking) Muslims in Kansu, Tso Tsungt’ang<br />
had methodically prepared the reconquest of Sinkiang against tremendous<br />
odds, such as doubts in government circles as to the wisdom of<br />
the whole enterprise, and an almost complete lack of funds, which had<br />
forced him to spend three years gathering his own resources before<br />
launching the operation.<br />
The reconquest remained incomplete in one area, however: that of<br />
the Ili with the former capital of the province, Kulja, occupied since<br />
1870 by Russia.The Russians refused to relinquish it, citing a variety of<br />
reasons, one being the expense they had incurred while occupying the<br />
area.When they finally did withdraw in 1881, after two series of negotations<br />
in St.Petersburg and London, against payment of a large indemnity,<br />
they still retained its westernmost portion.The exact boundaries of<br />
this segment remained controversial, and the controversy resurfaced<br />
during the years of the Sino-Soviet split in the 1970s and 1980s when<br />
Chinese maps showed as China’s territory an area extending all the way<br />
to Lake Balkhash.<br />
Once the dispute with Russia was settled, Beijing imposed upon<br />
Sinkiang a system closer to that of a regular Chinese province rather<br />
than restoring its former status as a family possession of the Manchu<br />
(Ching) Dynasty.Four administrative segments were created in 1884,<br />
and their lieutenant-governors (tao-tai) reported to a governor-general<br />
who resided at Urumchi renamed in Chinese as Ti-hwa.Thus began the<br />
final chapter of Sinkiang under the rule of imperial China and lasted<br />
until the events of 1911–12 ushered in the republican era.Despite the<br />
aforementioned reorganization, the administration of the province bore
268 A history of Inner Asia<br />
some basic characteristics of the former period, such as greater independence<br />
of the governor-general and local self-rule by the Muslim population,<br />
especially in the Nan Lu segment.Relative contentment, peace,<br />
and order were the result.<br />
Among the beneficiaries of this situation were European travelers,<br />
scholars, and archaeologists, who began to discover previously<br />
undreamt-of cultural treasures buried under the sands or hidden in the<br />
caves of Sinkiang.This was a truly romantic era of modern archaeology,<br />
a kind of scholarly mirror image of the political and colonial Great<br />
Game going on at the same time in the same general area.British,<br />
German, French, and Russian explorers vied with each other, making<br />
sensational discoveries and often endeavoring to haul what could be<br />
moved to the museums and libraries of their own countries.One of<br />
these scholars was Sir Aurel Stein (1862–1943), who for many years<br />
headed the Archaeology Service of British India.He undertook three<br />
prolonged expeditions between 1900 and 1916 to a number of points<br />
along the ancient Silk Road.His discoveries and studies were many, but<br />
the most sensational was the exploration of the grottoes of Tunhuang<br />
on the Kansu side of the trade route, with their riches of ancient manuscripts<br />
and Buddhist sculptures.Another famous site was that of the<br />
Turfan oasis, where a German team under A.Von Lecoq and A.<br />
Grünwedel found priceless linguistic documents.French scholars led by<br />
Paul Pelliot also made their contributions and took their share, especially<br />
at Tunhuang.The foundation of the Chinese republic in 1912 signaled<br />
an end to the relative freedom of archaeological exploration, although<br />
some of it, especially that of the “Mission Pelliot,” did return in the<br />
1920s and early 1930s.Much work had been accomplished, however, in<br />
the short period of the 1890s and the first two decades of the twentieth<br />
century, and the achievements of this branch of European Orientalism<br />
are truly admirable.The study of the thousands of documents brought<br />
to London, Berlin, Paris, and St.Petersburg continues to this day.<br />
Meanwhile, during this final period of Manchu rule, the political<br />
Great Game abated somewhat, at least between its chief players, Britain<br />
and Russia.The two powers gradually edged toward mutual accommodation,<br />
a process initiated with the 1895 agreement and strengthened by<br />
the 1907 convention.This special truce allayed Britain’s fear for the<br />
northwest frontier of the Raj; from then on, growing Russian presence<br />
in Sinkiang no longer met with noticeable British opposition.Russia’s<br />
position of strength in Inner Asia secured her an influence in Sinkiang<br />
that far outstripped that of Britain.In contrast to the diminutive British
Sinkiang as part of China 269<br />
consulate at Kashgar staffed by the isolated though remarkable George<br />
Macartney, Russia had large missions both at Kashgar and Kulja; a<br />
Russo-Asiatic Bank was founded in Kashgar, and a cart road was built<br />
between Irkeshtam at the Turkestan Governorate-General border and<br />
Kashgar; the Russian border post of Tashkurgan on the Sinkiang side<br />
of the Sarikol range, in the sensitive Pamir part of the Fergana oblast,<br />
controlled access to Chinese territory from that side.Indeed, Russia<br />
seemed poised to do in Eastern Turkestan what she had recently done<br />
in Western Turkestan – to conquer it and transform it into yet another<br />
Governorate-General of the Tsar’s empire.Among the factors that<br />
deterred her from doing so may have been the complications that this<br />
would have caused with China, and, perhaps most importantly, the<br />
mutually felt need to improve relations with Britain, for both powers<br />
were becoming alarmed at the growing military might of Germany.The<br />
energy and ability of the first governor of the republican era, Yang<br />
Tseng-hsin, may also have had a share in keeping Sinkiang Chinese.<br />
Thus began a new phase in the history of Sinkiang, its existence as a<br />
province of the Republic of China, which lasted from 1912 to 1943 –<br />
or, in theory, until 1949.It was characterized by the long tenure of the<br />
first three governors at Urumchi: Yang Tseng-hsin (1912–28), Chin Shujen<br />
(1928–33), and Sheng Shih-ts’ai (1933–43), and by the subsequent<br />
turmoil of national rebellions and short-lived regional governments<br />
until the People’s Liberation Army re-established Beijing’s rule in 1949,<br />
this time Communist rule.<br />
The first of the three governors, Yang Tseng-hsin, was faced with formidable<br />
challenges: Chinese military garrisons, infected by rebellious<br />
secret societies that had infiltrated here from China proper, showed signs<br />
of mutiny; the awakening Muslim separatism made its first attempts at<br />
self-rule in the Ili province, while erupting in revolt around the eastern<br />
Nan Lu city of Hami (Qomul).Yang Tseng-hsin originally hailed from<br />
the largely Muslim province of Yunnan in south-west China, and this<br />
background must have helped him regain control of a province increasingly<br />
disturbed by these Muslim currents.He subsequently steered the<br />
province along a course designed to develop it economically while consolidating<br />
its Chinese orientation.Chinese was the only language permitted<br />
to be used in newspapers, at the expense of Turki and other<br />
native tongues.<br />
It was during Yang’s tenure of office that Russia experienced historic<br />
upheavals.In 1916, the First World War sent one of its distant echoes to<br />
Sinkiang in the form of the wave of mainly Kyrgyz and Kazakh refu-
270 A history of Inner Asia<br />
gees, some 300,000 souls, fleeing from reprisals following the collapse of<br />
the aforementioned uprising against Russian attempts to draft Muslim<br />
men for trench work on the fronts.Yang arranged a voluntary repatriation<br />
of most of them, in return for the colonial authorities’ promise of<br />
amnesty.By then – 1917 – Russia had been shaken by the February<br />
Revolution, and soon entered the whirlwind of the October Revolution,<br />
Bolshevik seizure of power, and the civil war.After peace – Bolshevik<br />
peace – had been restored, Russian Turkestan was transformed into five<br />
republics of the newly formed Soviet Union.Mongolia joined this commotion<br />
only to emerge, by that same year of 1924, as a People’s Republic<br />
and a virtual protectorate of the USSR.A similar development could<br />
have occurred in Chinese Turkestan but for the careful steerage of Yang,<br />
whose authority inspired enough confidence to persuade General<br />
Anenkov and his 7,000 White troops, who in 1920 retreated to Sinkiang,<br />
to let themselves be disarmed and interned, instead of acting like<br />
Ungern-Sternberg in Mongolia with, as a consequence, the Red Army<br />
entering the country and playing the role of the final arbiter.<br />
For all his policy of benign Sinicization, however, Yang Tseng-hsin<br />
could not stem the continued growth of Muslim Turkic nationalism in<br />
Sinkiang.Spurred on by a conference of Turkic Muslims of Central Asia<br />
held at Tashkent in 1921, native renaissance became sophisticated<br />
enough to rise above local particularism and reach for a common<br />
denominator, which was the historic but long extinct name “Uighur.” We<br />
shall never know how widely this concept would have been accepted by<br />
all the Turks of Sinkiang, had the province attained independence; we<br />
may suspect that the Kazakhs would have preferred to join their kinsmen<br />
across the border or agitated for their autonomy, and that the Kyrgyz<br />
would have done likewise.History, however, never put these questions to<br />
the test, and the main Muslim group of Sinkiang, the Turki-speaking<br />
urban dwellers and agriculturalists of Nan Lu, as well as their offshoot<br />
the Taranchis of Bei Lu, were – and still are – preoccupied, or at least<br />
some of their intellectual elite are, with how to fashion their newly formulated<br />
Uighur identity under the Chinese government’s watchful eye.<br />
Meanwhile Russian official presence, briefly interrupted in 1918,<br />
became further consolidated and expanded in its Soviet garb during the<br />
final years of Yang’s office.Moscow now had five consulates in Sinkiang,<br />
and Yang allowed them to stay open even after 1927 when Chiang Kaishek<br />
and his Kuomintang government in Nanjing suddenly assumed an<br />
anti-Soviet stance and severed diplomatic relations with Moscow.The<br />
significance of this measure could hardly be exaggerated, for it illustrates
Sinkiang as part of China 271<br />
what was so special about Sinkiang – its distance from China proper in<br />
contrast to the proximity of Siberian and Central Asian Russia, with the<br />
relative – and at times nearly full – independence of its governors from<br />
the Chinese government, but with a seemingly inexorable growth of<br />
Russian influence.<br />
During Yang’s less capable successor Chin Shu-jen’s governorate<br />
(1928–33), the problems that had until then been held in check reemerged.Hami<br />
stirred again, and in 1933 at Kashgar Khoja Niyaz and<br />
his partisans proclaimed an Uighur Republic, demanding independence<br />
or at least autonomy; this attempt is usually referred to as the “First<br />
Revolution.” Disorders multiplied in the east, where Dungans (Chinese<br />
Muslims) were making inroads from Kansu, and finally a mutiny of<br />
Russian mercenaries at Urumchi brought about Chin’s downfall and his<br />
replacement by Sheng Shih-ts’ai, a professional soldier from Manchuria.<br />
Sheng proved a remarkably able and relatively honest administrator.<br />
He restored order and, although he quashed the Kashgar experiment,<br />
he reversed Yang’s policy of stifling the native ethnolinguistic renaissance<br />
and allowed Uighur to flourish.In the early years of his tenure his<br />
reforms followed a “numbers” pattern popular in China: in 1933 he proclaimed<br />
an “Eight Points” policy: interethnic equality, religious freedom,<br />
reform in land tenure, finances, administration, education, and the judiciary,<br />
and development of self-government; this was in 1936 modified to<br />
“Six Great Policies” which in fact expanded the earlier scope to include<br />
“anti-imperialism” and “cooperation with the Soviet Union.” The two<br />
last-named clauses revealed his orientation, which became pro-Soviet to<br />
the extent that not Nanjing but Moscow was his sponsor and supporter.<br />
Russia’s help was financial, but even more through technicians, setting<br />
in motion a program of industrialization, improved communications,<br />
and development of the oilfields of Karamai with a refinery near<br />
Urumchi.Following the Soviet line and receiving their help did not<br />
make Sheng a communist, however: his reforms stopped well short of<br />
the radical measures such as collectivization of agriculture and herding<br />
that had created havoc across the border; nor did he launch a dogmatic<br />
and all-pervasive indoctrination of his people, of the kind the Soviets<br />
were inflicting upon their subjects.Characteristically, there was no link<br />
between him and the Communist uprising led by Mao Tse-tung against<br />
the central government.Like several other Chinese warlords whose local<br />
rule replaced the collapsing authority of the center, Sheng was driven by<br />
lust for personal power, but the province that he ruled benefited in the<br />
main from his lucidity and relative honesty.
272 A history of Inner Asia<br />
In 1941, however, Sheng made a mistake that would put an end to his<br />
fairly successful rule: expecting a defeat of Russia by Germany, he<br />
swerved to an anti-Soviet and anti-Communist stance and tried to patch<br />
up his relations with the government of Chiang Kai-shek (which had<br />
meanwhile moved to Chungking).This both deprived him of Soviet<br />
support and ended his independence from the central government.By<br />
1943 Sheng also realized that Russia’s defeat was neither imminent nor<br />
even likely, and he once more reversed his orientation.It did not work,<br />
and in 1944 the once so powerful satrap left Sinkiang for China.<br />
One of the results of Sheng’s 1941 turnabout was a shift from his relatively<br />
liberal policies, especially with respect to the Uighurs and other<br />
non-Chinese ethnic groups, to the far less tolerant attitude of the<br />
Kuomintang government.The change had the effect of spurring on the<br />
Muslims to again strive for self-rule, and in 1944 a group led by<br />
Saifuddin proclaimed autonomy at Kulja – the so-called “Second<br />
Revolution.” The location of this attempt was significant: no longer<br />
limited to the Uighurs of Kashgaria, it also included the Kazakhs of the<br />
Ili region and showed that political ferment had reached the more cosmopolitan<br />
Bei Lu centers.The Kuomintang authorities, now installed at<br />
Urumchi, were unable to crush the secessionists and tried to resolve the<br />
crisis by forming a coalition government of the province that included<br />
also Turkic Muslims, and by promising liberal reforms with greater<br />
rights for the minorities.Its Chinese chairman, General Chang Chihchung,<br />
did not go far enough for the natives, while going too far for the<br />
central government, so that in 1947 he was replaced as chairman by<br />
Masud Sabri, a conservative Uighur landowner.This seemingly viable<br />
compromise did not work either, and in December 1948 yet another<br />
attempt was made by replacing him with Burhan Shahidi, a Muslim of<br />
complex (possibly Tatar) background that included several years as a<br />
citizen of Russian Turkestan and as a member of the Russian<br />
Communist Party.These attempts, however, lost any relevance in the<br />
wake of the victory of the Communist side in China’s civil war.On 17<br />
December 1949 a Provisional People’s Government was established at<br />
Urumchi.<br />
China thus regained full control of her Inner Asian possession, and<br />
the subsequent process contained elements partly analogous to those<br />
present in Russia’s Central Asia of the early 1920s.Recognizing<br />
Sinkiang’s special ethnic physiognomy, Beijing gave it the status of an<br />
“autonomous region,” with the name of the principal group as the<br />
determinant: Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region.This happened in
Sinkiang as part of China 273<br />
1955, but already in 1954 the Ili segment had been established as an<br />
autonomous sub-section with the name of its principal group as the<br />
determinant: Ili Kazakh Autonomous District.Several other autonomous<br />
districts, such as the Artush Kyrgyz Autonomous District, were<br />
established.This process may have been partly inspired by the razmezhevanie<br />
(delimitation) that in 1924 created the republics and autonomous<br />
regions of Soviet Central Asia, and the goal was no doubt similar: to give<br />
the minorities their due, while retaining control of the area.The subsequent<br />
composition of the regional government, parliament, and most<br />
institutions also followed the Soviet pattern of filling the nominally principal<br />
posts with the natives, while doubling them with Chinese officials<br />
so as to make the system fail-safe.<br />
Sinkiang, the former Chinese Turkestan, has since then gone through<br />
a process that bears many other analogies with its western twin, the<br />
former Russian Turkestan.Like Moscow, Beijing has on the whole sincerely<br />
allowed the natives to assert their cultural identity, speak and use<br />
and teach their languages, and associate with the Chinese on a basis of<br />
personal equality.Economic development has been pursued vigorously,<br />
transportation and communications media expanded, education and<br />
the foundation of schools, including the University of Urumchi, supported.All<br />
of that had a price, of course.To begin with, Beijing imposed<br />
its Marxist system on the province, with collectivization and other measures<br />
of questionable economic soundness.The uncompromising hand<br />
of Communism could not but deprive the people of Sinkiang of those<br />
freedoms which by the standards of Western democracy are deemed<br />
indispensable.Like their brethren across the border, the Uighurs and<br />
other Muslims of Sinkiang lived in the 1960s their years of nightmare,<br />
some two decades after the nightmare in Soviet Central Asia: the<br />
Cultural Revolution hit the natives in a manner not unlike the terror<br />
launched by Stalin in the 1930s to break the native Muslims’ national<br />
spirit.One of the targets was religion, and organized Islam was indeed<br />
put on the defensive; it lived the same marginal kind of existence, carefully<br />
monitored by the Chinese government, to which it had been relegated<br />
by the Soviet government.<br />
Finally one salient feature must be emphasized: the role that the<br />
Chinese language has played as the common medium for the region’s<br />
citizens, especially for its younger generations.Here too the analogy with<br />
Russian across the border is striking.All students learn Chinese at school<br />
and many become bilingual, especially those with greater professional<br />
ambition.Moreover, immigration from China proper has increased to
274 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the point where the Han (ethnic Chinese) element has come close to that<br />
of the Uighurs, if the Hui (Chinese-speaking Muslims) are also taken<br />
into account.According to the 1990 census, out of the total population<br />
of 15,156,883 inhabitants, 7,191,845 were Uighurs, thus less than onehalf<br />
(47.45 percent) of the total population, the Han 5,695,409, and Hui<br />
682,912, thus 6,378,321 citizens whose mother tongue is Chinese, or<br />
42.09 percent of the total population. One can somewhat improve the<br />
native Turkic population’s representation by combining the Uighurs<br />
with the Kazakhs: if we add the 1,106,271 or 7.30 percent to the<br />
Uighurs, we obtain 8,298,116 Turkic speakers (54.75 percent of the total<br />
population; the percentage will be still slightly higher if we add the<br />
Kyrgyz and Uzbeks of Sinkiang); moreover, the impact of the large ethnolinguistic<br />
Chinese component might be considered somewhat lessened<br />
if the religious criterion were applied and the Hui were added to<br />
the Turkic element: the figure would be over 8,981,028 Muslims, or<br />
59.26 percent of the total population. On the other hand again, the<br />
significance of these figures is modified by the lopsided ratio in centers<br />
of political or economic power: thus the population of Urumchi,<br />
1,217,316 strong, consisted of 934,851 (76.80 percent) Han Chinese,<br />
161,643 (13.28 percent) Uighurs, and 83,001 (6.82 percent) Hui<br />
Chinese; taken together, the Chinese-speaking component in the provincial<br />
capital represented 83.62 percent. Another example is Karamai, a<br />
center of oil production.Its 210,064 inhabitants consisted of 161,097<br />
(76.69 percent) Han Chinese, 30,895 (14.71 percent) Uighurs, and 4,997<br />
(2.38 percent) Hui Chinese. It is true that the ratio changes in most<br />
agglomerations of Nan Lu, the now obsolete name for the more traditional<br />
southern part of Sinkiang.In Kashgar, the figures show 76.53<br />
percent Uighurs, 21.98 percent Han, and only 0.46 percent Hui; in<br />
Khotan, 83.32 percent Uighurs, 16.13 percent Han, and 0.40 percent<br />
Hui; in Turfan, 71.82 percent Uighurs as against 20.25 percent Han.<br />
Even in Nan Lu, however, Aksu, a city that has occasionally been the residence<br />
of Chinese governors, still boasts a Han majority: 51.51 percent,<br />
as compared with 47.02 percent for the Uighurs; while the strategically<br />
located Hami has a Han majority of 66.11 percent as against 25.94<br />
percent Uighurs.These statistics suggest that even if we admit that a<br />
certain proportion of these Chinese are temporary residents, Chinese<br />
presence in Sinkiang is anchored in a solid demographic base, with the<br />
conclusion that Eastern Turkestan is likely to remain Chinese Turkestan,<br />
unlike Western Turkestan which is no longer Russian.
chapter twenty<br />
Independent Central Asian Republics<br />
We have chronicled the rush to independence that in the final stage of<br />
Gorbachev’s perestroika seized all the Union republics, a torrent that ultimately<br />
carried the five Central Asian republics along.The dam really<br />
burst with the collapse of the attempted coup against the reforms and<br />
their proponent, but there had been two daring trailblazers: Lithuania<br />
on 11 March 1990, and Georgia on 9 April of that year.The rest took<br />
the plunge only after the August 1991 coup: Estonia and Latvia on the<br />
20th (thus still while the drama was being played out in Moscow),<br />
Armenia on the 23rd, Ukraine and Belarus on the 24th, Moldova on the<br />
27th, Azerbaijan on the 30th.The Central Asians were the last to jump<br />
on the bandwagon.<br />
Thus on 31 August the Uzbek parliament proclaimed the existence of<br />
an independent Republic of Uzbekistan; the declaration was submitted<br />
to a popular vote which confirmed it in December of the same year, and<br />
which also elected Islam Karimov as the republic’s president.Similar<br />
steps were taken in the other four republics.Meanwhile, those former<br />
Soviet public figures who had survived the upheavals, or who had surged<br />
forward to seize the leadership from the “old guard,” succeeded in<br />
forging a special sequel to the USSR, the CIS (Commonwealth of<br />
Independent States, Soyuz Nezavisimykh Gosudarstv in Russian, Mustaqil<br />
Davlatlar Hamdostligi in Uzbek).Representatives of the participating<br />
members met on 21 December 1991 in the Kazakh capital Almaty to<br />
sign a treaty establishing the commonwealth.<br />
The new commonwealth resembles the former Soviet Union no more<br />
than the British Commonwealth of Nations did the former British<br />
empire or the Union Française did the French one.This time the<br />
member states became truly independent, and their membership in the<br />
commonwealth resulted from a decision made by the indigenous leaders<br />
in Central Asia, not the Russian ones in Moscow.The difference<br />
between the old and new order is fundamental, and derives from the fact<br />
275
Omsk<br />
Troitsk<br />
RUSSIAN FEDERATION<br />
RUSSIAN FEDERATION<br />
Irtysh<br />
Kustanai Kokchetav<br />
Tobol<br />
Orenburg<br />
Irtysh<br />
Astana<br />
(Akmolinsk)<br />
Iahim<br />
Uralsk<br />
Semipalatinsk<br />
Black<br />
Irtysh<br />
Karaganda<br />
Turgai<br />
Ural<br />
Gurev Emba<br />
Lake Balkhash<br />
Jezqazghan<br />
Sary Su<br />
Caspian<br />
Ili River<br />
Chu<br />
Syr Darya<br />
Aral<br />
Sea<br />
Sea<br />
Kazyl Orda<br />
Almaty<br />
SINKIANG<br />
(CHINA)<br />
Naryn<br />
Chimkent<br />
UZBEKISTAN<br />
KYRGYZSTAN<br />
Amu Darya<br />
TURKMENISTAN<br />
Kazakhstan<br />
Map 8 Kazakhstan
K A Z A K H S T A N<br />
Chu River<br />
K A Z A K H S T A N<br />
Jambul<br />
Talas River<br />
Karakol<br />
Bishkek<br />
Talas River<br />
Balykchy<br />
Issyk-kul<br />
Chu River<br />
Talas<br />
Naryn River<br />
Naryn River<br />
Syr Darya River<br />
Tashkent<br />
Naryn<br />
Jalalabad<br />
Uzgend<br />
UZBEKISTAN<br />
U Z B E K I S T A N<br />
SINKIANG<br />
(CHINESE<br />
TURKESTAN)<br />
Osh<br />
Uzbek enclaves<br />
T A J I K I S T A N<br />
T A J I K I S T A N<br />
Kyrgyzstan<br />
Map 9 Kyrgyzstan
UZBEKISTAN<br />
KYRGYZSTAN<br />
Syr Darya River<br />
UZBEKISTAN<br />
Khujand<br />
SINKIANG<br />
Kyzyl Su<br />
River<br />
KYRGYZSTAN<br />
(CHINESE<br />
TURKESTAN)<br />
Surkhob River Kyzyl Su River<br />
Zarafshan River<br />
Samarkand<br />
Panjikent<br />
Garm<br />
Dushanbe<br />
Gorno-Badakhshan<br />
Autonomous<br />
Region<br />
UZBEKISTAN<br />
Kuliab<br />
Khorugh<br />
SINKIANG<br />
Vaksh River<br />
AFGHANISTAN<br />
Fayzabad<br />
Amu Darya<br />
Panj River<br />
KASHMIR<br />
PAKISTAN<br />
(Badakshan<br />
Province)<br />
Kunduz<br />
AFGHANISTAN<br />
PAKISTAN<br />
Tajikistan<br />
Map 10 Tajikistan
KAZAKHSTAN<br />
Turkmenistan<br />
Amu Darya<br />
Urgench<br />
UZBEKISTAN<br />
Kunya<br />
Urgench<br />
Dashhovuz<br />
Khiva<br />
Turkmenbashy<br />
(Krasnovodsk)<br />
Caspian<br />
Nebit Dag<br />
Sea<br />
I I<br />
I I I I I I I I I I<br />
Charju<br />
I I<br />
I<br />
I I<br />
Kyzyl Arvat<br />
Amu Darya<br />
Karakum Canal<br />
Ashgabat<br />
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I<br />
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I<br />
Karakum Canal<br />
I I<br />
Kerki<br />
Bairam<br />
Ali<br />
I<br />
I I I I I I I<br />
I I I I I<br />
I I<br />
I I<br />
Mary<br />
I I I I I I I<br />
I<br />
I I I<br />
I R A N<br />
I<br />
I I I I I I I I I<br />
Tejen<br />
A F G H A N I S T A N<br />
Murghab River<br />
Tejek River<br />
Meshed<br />
Kushka<br />
Map 11 Turkmenistan
Uzbekistan<br />
Syr Darya<br />
Aral Sea<br />
(Kazakhstan)<br />
KAZAKHSTAN<br />
K A Z A K H S T A N<br />
Kyzyl-orda<br />
Jambul<br />
KYRGYZSTAN<br />
Naryn<br />
Chimkent<br />
Aral Sea<br />
(Uzbekistan)<br />
Karakalpak<br />
Muinsk<br />
Autonomous Amu Darya<br />
Delta<br />
Nukus<br />
Republic<br />
Kunya<br />
Ugench<br />
Muruntay<br />
Tashkent<br />
Kyzylkum<br />
Desert<br />
Khiya<br />
Zarafshan<br />
KYRGYZSTAN<br />
Karakum<br />
Desert<br />
TURKMENISTAN<br />
Samarkand<br />
Bukhara<br />
Dushanbe<br />
TAJIKISTAN<br />
Karshi<br />
Amu<br />
Darya<br />
A F G H A N I S T A N<br />
Map 12 Uzbekistan
Independent Central Asian Republics 281<br />
that there is no central government or authority in Moscow ruling its<br />
subordinates in the republics.<br />
Why did the Central Asians even bother to join the new commonwealth?<br />
For practical reasons.Obviously, decades of Moscow’s rule,<br />
central economic planning and population movement had created<br />
bonds that, although not indissoluble (one of the favorite slogans of the<br />
former regime), were deemed worth keeping if modified in positive,<br />
mutually beneficial directions.<br />
The legacy of the past of course includes problems and even scars of<br />
many kinds.One is the simple fact that much of the political leadership<br />
and bureaucratic infrastructure still is the same as before: the same<br />
Communist bureaucrats and their obedient staff are at the helm of the<br />
newly independent countries.Four out of the five republics have<br />
members of the former Communist elite as presidents: the Uzbek Islam<br />
Karimov, the Kazakh Nursultan Nazarbaev, the Turkmen Saparmurad<br />
Niyazov, and the Tajik Imomali Rakhmonov; Askar Akaev, President of<br />
Kyrgyzstan, is the only exception (he too appears to have been a<br />
member of the Party, but not as a career politician).Delegates of the<br />
recent Communist parties fill the parliaments, and offices are staffed by<br />
the same bureaucrats as before.Most of these people depended on the<br />
Soviet system for their careers, privileges, and livelihood, and we could<br />
be tempted to view their roles since 1991 with skepticism.The chief<br />
political parties in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan are the Communist<br />
ones, except that they sport new names (“People’s Democratic Party [of<br />
Uzbekistan”] and “Democratic Party of Turkmenistan”), while that of<br />
Tajikistan did not even bother to change its name (those of Kazakhstan<br />
and Kyrgyzstan, briefly banned, were revived under their old names<br />
without, however, regaining power as the ruling parties).Worse still,<br />
opposition parties and individuals championing a free political process<br />
have been mistreated by the government of Uzbekistan to a degree<br />
hardly compatible with true democracy; the situation has been similar<br />
in Turkmenistan, where moreover the personality cult, symptomatic of<br />
many former colonies now ruled by “strongman regimes,” has reached<br />
almost pathological proportions: the President, Saparmurad Niyazov,<br />
has demanded and received an adulation comparable only to that<br />
enjoyed by Stalin (or by such present-day leaders as Saddam Hussein<br />
and Muammar Kadhafi), and like the great Soviet dictator, he found his<br />
civilian name incapable of expressing his greatness: he is now known as<br />
Turkmenbashy, “Chief of the Turkmens.” In all fairness to Stalin, we<br />
have to admit that the “Russian” dictator could plead a sensible reason
282 A history of Inner Asia<br />
for assuming this name (which, incidentally, is based on the Russian<br />
loanword for steel, stal’).Jugashvili, his real name (especially when<br />
spelled in Russian which lacks the phoneme j, and circumvents the<br />
problem of transliterating it in foreign words by combining two letters,<br />
which in turn become three when transliterated from Russian into<br />
English: Dzhugashvili), would indeed have been unwieldy in the<br />
Russian-speaking society that had the misfortune of adopting him.<br />
Turkmenbashy has no such excuse, for Niyazov is a perfectly viable<br />
name in the society which he represents, and the only reservation that<br />
could be made concerns the Russian ending -ov.This import, introduced<br />
in the colonial era and reinforced under the Soviets, had the double<br />
purpose of creating distinctive fixed family names and facilitating their<br />
use in Russian.It has now begun to give way to genuine indigenous<br />
forms, especially the variants of oghli, “son of,” in Turkic languages, and<br />
its synonym zoda in Tajik.And in all fairness to Turkmenbashy, it is not<br />
Stalin, Hussein, or Kadhafi whom he claims as his role models.His hero<br />
is Kemal Atatürk, the founder of modern Turkey, who had his good<br />
Turkish name Mustafa Kemal embellished by that of “Turk par excellence.”<br />
If Niyazov/Turkmenbashy does indeed decide to sincerely<br />
emulate his Turkish hero, he will secure for himself an honorable place<br />
in Turkmen and world history.<br />
Meanwhile Tajikistan has gone through terrible convulsions – in fact<br />
a civil war – to the point where recovery of power by the experienced<br />
Communist Party and reinforcement of military control by CIS troops<br />
– chiefly Russian ones – appeared preferable to chaos or a takeover by<br />
Islamic fundamentalists.It is true that some observers consider the latter<br />
threat remote and the label wrong.(Until recently, one could share their<br />
skepticism with respect to a fundamentalist danger in Central Asia.The<br />
well-nigh complete victory of the Taliban in neighboring Afghanistan<br />
shows, however, that the danger may be real in Tajikistan.) Unlike the<br />
other four republics, this one has not developed a sense of nationhood,<br />
and in the prolonged near-anarchy Islamic radicals might have become<br />
the strongest among the contending forces, bringing about a process<br />
analogous to that in Afghanistan if it had not been for the troops of the<br />
CIS.<br />
The totalitarian past of the Soviet period has thus been succeeded by<br />
the authoritarian regimes of present-day Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan,<br />
and although Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan came close to establishing<br />
genuine democracy – or so their Western well-wishers had hoped – in<br />
the last few years they too have shown a disturbing trend toward author-
Independent Central Asian Republics 283<br />
itarianism.Such reservations, however, could make us forget how radical<br />
and fundamental the break that occurred in 1991 was, and the fact that<br />
this break has deepened ever since.Three interrelated aspects stand out:<br />
the leaders and governments of the republics no longer obey Moscow<br />
but follow their own judgement; the interests of the republics, rather<br />
than those of a supranational empire (or indeed of Russia), are the decisive<br />
criteria for their policies; and the obligatory quasi-religious worship<br />
of the Communist doctrine and atheism has gone by the wayside.Islam<br />
Karimov, the President of Uzbekistan, is the same man who rose to<br />
power as a member of the Communist Party through the former Soviet<br />
apparatus, but the conditions under which he can act now are totally<br />
different from those imposed upon him before 1991.The age-old question<br />
of whether man fashions history or history fashions man at least<br />
here receives an answer: even those leaders of Central Asian republics<br />
who are the same as before have become different men now that the<br />
circumstances have changed. 1<br />
The transformations that have imposed themselves or have been<br />
carried out, initiated, or announced, are legion.Again, some could be<br />
derided as purely cosmetic changes or brazen deceptions, but even those<br />
are likely to eventually make their effect felt.The foremost is of course<br />
the very principle of human rights with guaranteed political and intellectual<br />
freedom.All the republics have between 1992 and 1996 adopted<br />
new constitutions which proclaim these principles.The economic front<br />
comes next; here, the double change from Moscow-controlled central<br />
planning to that determined by the republics, and the switch from a<br />
monolithic state-run economy to a market economy, lead the roster.<br />
Progress in both these respects – free citizens and free enterprise – has<br />
been slow and riddled with reverses, but then after seven decades of the<br />
old system successful change cannot happen overnight.<br />
International relations can be viewed as the third giant step into a<br />
different present and a promising future.For the first time since their<br />
creation in 1924, Central Asian republics have been free to take their<br />
rightful place in the world community, and they have done so with a vengeance.All<br />
have become members of the United Nations and of other<br />
major international organizations, and have diplomatic relations with a<br />
1 This observation could apply even to political parties: the Communist Party of Tajikistan –<br />
despite the name – is no longer the organization subservient to its Moscow patron or bound by a<br />
rigid dogmatic ideology.Pragmatism, nationalism, and recognition of basic Western values are<br />
its hallmarks now, at least on the theoretical level.This is no doubt why its rule has been deemed<br />
preferable to the danger of a fundamentalist takeover.
284 A history of Inner Asia<br />
growing number of foreign countries, including Western Europe, the<br />
Russian Federation, the United States, the People’s Republic of China,<br />
the Islamic Republic of Iran, the Arab countries, and Israel.This combination<br />
alone reveals the magnitude of the novelty and the nature of<br />
their independence: treating Russia as a foreign country would have<br />
been anathema under the previous system; dealing directly with the<br />
United States would have been treasonous; contacts with China<br />
depended entirely on the vicissitudes of relations between Moscow and<br />
Beijing; friendship at the same time with the Arab countries, Iran, and<br />
Israel might have seemed impossible.<br />
Russia may have become a foreign country, but her role in each of the<br />
five republics has been paramount and is likely to remain so for the foreseeable<br />
future.There are many reasons for that, some obvious, some discernible<br />
only on closer look.Comparison with “French” North Africa<br />
and “British” India may again be instructive here.The bureaucratic,<br />
intellectual, scientific, technological, economic, and logistical infrastructure,<br />
including publishing, is to a large degree Russian-trained and functions<br />
in Russian, just as it does in French and English in the latter two<br />
areas.In Central Asia too the former colonial power’s language and<br />
legacy form a bond if not of unity, then at least of smoother communication<br />
and access to scientific and technological literature.On the other<br />
hand, the idea of a common Turkic language – a “modernized” form of<br />
Chaghatay, may yet gain favor and the dream of Turkistani nationalists<br />
of the 1920s could come true.More likely, however, is further consolidation<br />
of the separate forms of Turkic, with English making an inroad into<br />
the hitherto exclusive domain of Russian as the supranational language<br />
even in Central Asia.<br />
Then there is the factor of minorities, primarily Russian and<br />
Ukrainian, living in the five republics.It is of course not limited to<br />
Central Asia, and the news media have profusely reported the degree to<br />
which this problem has caused tension between the three Baltic republics<br />
and Russia, for example.Similar questions have arisen at the time of<br />
decolonization in other parts of the world, especially in French North<br />
Africa.The intensity and nature of the problem varies with the republics,<br />
but one question, that of double citizenship, is universal.Should the<br />
Russians living in a republic have the right to be citizens of that republic,<br />
while also retaining Russian citizenship? In order to qualify for local<br />
citizenship, should they be required to fulfill certain conditions, the foremost<br />
being knowledge of the local (Uzbek, Kazakh, etc.) language?<br />
Since Russian presence has tended to concentrate in compact neighbor-
Independent Central Asian Republics 285<br />
hoods, whether urban (Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, Tajikistan) or both<br />
urban and rural (Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan), several generations have<br />
been able to function without any attempt to learn the natives’ language,<br />
a situation further reinforced by the Central Asians’ own indispensable<br />
study of Russian.For the time being, compromise seems to be the<br />
answer, with the provision that the next generation of Russians will have<br />
mastered the language of the respective republic through obligatory<br />
inclusion in school curricula.A graver, almost unique problem is posed<br />
by the Russian and Ukrainian minority in Kazakhstan.Much of the<br />
republic’s northern belt along Russia’s European and Siberian frontier<br />
has become a de facto Russian territory because of the movement of settlers<br />
that began in the late eighteenth century and continued into the<br />
Khrushchev era.Both the predominance of the Slavic population in this<br />
belt, and its contiguity with Russia herself, beg the inevitable question of<br />
whether this part of Kazakhstan should not receive special treatment, or<br />
even be separated from the republic and join the Russian Federation.It<br />
led to a disagreement between the presidents of the two countries,<br />
Yeltsin and Nazarbaev, in 1992; the tension has since subsided without,<br />
however, having been quite resolved.The question resurfaced during the<br />
Russian electoral campaign of 1993, when such nationalists as<br />
Zhirinovskiy (and, in a more traditional vein, Solzhenitsyn), called for<br />
annexation of the Slavic-populated belt by Russia, and the Kazakh<br />
President retorted that such an act would resemble Hitler’s annexation<br />
of the Sudeten region of former Czechoslovakia.One of the symptoms<br />
of the Kazakhs’ nervousness about these northern territories is the transferral<br />
of the government’s seat to Aqmola (Akmolinsk in Russian), for the<br />
ostensible reason that this city is less excentrically located than Almaty,<br />
but probably also because it symbolically stakes out Kazakh authority<br />
over the heavily Russian-populated northern belt of the republic.A<br />
glance at the map shows that Aqmola, though less excentric than Almaty,<br />
does not lie in the geographical center of the republic but rather near the<br />
Russian border.Places like Zhezkazgan should have been preferable if<br />
centrality was the goal.The Kazakh name means “white tomb,” and the<br />
city grew up around a military fort built there in 1830 shortly after the<br />
Russian penetration into the area.In 1961 its name was changed to<br />
Tselinograd (a Russian word translatable as “Virgin Soil Town”), to celebrate<br />
the agricultural expansion campaign with the concomitant<br />
arrival of the last wave of Slavic settlers.This renaming was also forced<br />
on the Kazakhs (thus the entry “Tselinograd,” not “Aqmola,” in the<br />
Qazaq Sovet Entsiklopediasy).It was only with Kazakhstan’s independence
286 A history of Inner Asia<br />
that the city recovered its Kazakh name.On 9 June 1998 the Fifth Turkic<br />
Summit was held there, and the next day, 10 June, was marked by a celebration<br />
inaugurating Astana as the new capital of Kazakhstan – for that<br />
is the new and presumably final name of this city.“Astana” simply means<br />
“capital city” in Kazakh and one must thus conclude that it has become<br />
the republic’s city par excellence.<br />
Nevertheless, the leading theme in relations between Central Asia and<br />
Russia is cooperation, not confrontation.This includes a whole gamut<br />
of economic and professional aspects, but two deserve to be singled out.<br />
One is the location of the former Soviet, and now Russian, missilelaunching<br />
ground and space program center at Baikonur in<br />
Kazakhstan.Baikonur, situated in west-central Kazakhstan, was chosen<br />
in the Soviet era for strategic, logistical and climatic reasons, and it has<br />
retained most of these aspects to this day.Its continued use, against an<br />
initial payment of $1 billion and a lease fee of $115 million annually<br />
(both to be deducted from Kazakhstan’s debt to Russia), is likely to be an<br />
asset or a liability – or both – for Kazakhstan.<br />
The other aspect is defense.Before independence, the republics’ military,<br />
from raw recruits to generals, were integrated in the Red Army.<br />
Now all five are striving to create their own armed forces, but it is a laborious<br />
and costly process, so that reliance on those of the CIS or of Russia<br />
has proved unavoidable.Our definition is deliberately vague or confusing,<br />
because the situation itself is fluid and incompletely reported.Thus<br />
when Islamic fundamentalists, drawing on help from the mujahideen of<br />
Afghanistan, seemed able to prevail in Tajikistan during 1992, it was the<br />
CIS troops commanded by General Piankov who saved the situation, to<br />
the great relief not only of the fundamentalists’ Tajik opponents but also<br />
of Tajikistan’s Uzbek and Turkmen neighbors and even of the other<br />
Central Asians, the Kyrgyz and Kazakhs; the CIS troops continue to<br />
guard the Tajik–Afghan border, thus in fact the Central Asian–Afghan<br />
border.A more recent agreement in 1993 between the Turkmen and<br />
Russian governments garrisons Turkmenistan’s strategic points along<br />
the Afghan and Iranian borders with Russian armed forces, and entrusts<br />
the training of the Turkmen ones to Russian officers.We witness here<br />
one of history’s paradoxical but not infrequent paraphrases of itself: the<br />
Tsarist empire’s Turkestan was once guarded by Russian troops along<br />
these frontiers against a perceived threat from the British empire, with<br />
an undercurrent of a wish to push toward the Indian Ocean; this undercurrent<br />
resurfaced, or was perceived to do so, with the recent Soviet
Independent Central Asian Republics 287<br />
invasion of Afghanistan; today, Russia’s troops guard the same frontier<br />
but within an entirely different and unexpected context.<br />
The newly established international profile of the Central Asian<br />
republics is forcefully reflected in their relations with the United States.<br />
Diplomatic representation is only one part of the multifaceted and lively<br />
contacts; American business, academe, and foundations pursue the<br />
newly found opportunities for self-interest, research, and altruistic help<br />
abounding in this part of the world that was previously all but inaccessible<br />
to them.Moreover, the presence of the United Nations<br />
Organization in New York adds a further and unique dimension to<br />
Central Asian–American relations.<br />
One of the riches of Central Asia is mineral wealth, and American<br />
companies have entered the competitive arena of developing its exploitation.The<br />
oil of Kazakhstan and natural gas of Turkmenistan lead this<br />
roster.The Kazakh President Nursultan Nazarbaev signed in March<br />
1993, during one of his visits to Washington, a contract with the<br />
Chevron Oil Company to develop the oilfields of Tengiz in the Caspian<br />
confines of western Kazakhstan; James Baker, the former Secretary of<br />
State in the Bush administration, was one of the business leaders who at<br />
about the same time went to Turkmenistan to negotiate contracts with<br />
Saparmurad Niyazov, that republic’s President, aiming at developing the<br />
especially rich gas deposits of Nebit Dag.While both Kazakhstan and<br />
Turkmenistan (and, across the Caspian, Azerbaijan) have already<br />
benefited from their deposits of oil and natural gas, it is no more than a<br />
preview of the expected boom.For reasons of both technology and<br />
policy, only their surface, literally and figuratively, had been “scratched”<br />
in the Tsarist and Soviet periods.The technology of their exploitation<br />
lagged far behind that applied by the industrial West; and Moscow preferred<br />
to give priority to developing deposits in territories more safely<br />
under its control, primarily those of the Russian Federation.On the<br />
other hand, the promising potential of the Caspian basin suffers from a<br />
serious drawback: the lack of direct access to adequate ports from which<br />
to export oil and natural gas to Europe, America, or Japan.In order to<br />
do so, construction of long and costly pipelines will be necessary, but still<br />
more problematic may be the fact that these conduits will have to pass<br />
through other countries and thus remain at the mercy of their governments’<br />
whims and demands (and even of world powers across the<br />
oceans).<br />
A plan to build a pipeline through Turkmenistan to a Mediterranean
288 A history of Inner Asia<br />
port, or again to the Persian Gulf, has been discussed between the<br />
governments concerned, but it at first remained blocked by the US State<br />
Department because the pipeline would pass through Iran.The<br />
Turkmen government suddenly found itself thwarted by the presumptuous<br />
policies of both Russia and America.In 1993, Russia prevented<br />
the hard currency-starved Turkmenistan from exporting its natural gas<br />
to Western Europe at world prices (where it had been sold in the Soviet<br />
period with the income cashed in by Moscow) by simply choking off the<br />
pipeline conduit there, and forced the republic to sell the precious energy<br />
resource to impecunious members of the CIS such as Ukraine.America<br />
tried to subordinate the recently liberated republic’s economic interests<br />
to her own strategies.Both superpowers, however, have been successfully<br />
defied in this case, for a new pipeline, whose construction had been<br />
financed by Iran, was opened on 29 December 1997 in a festive ceremony<br />
attended by the two presidents, Turkmenbashy and Khatami.It<br />
links Korpeje, a site in the natural gas deposit area of Nebit Dag, with<br />
Kurd Kul on the Iranian side of the border near Gurgan. 2 The initial<br />
difficulty shows, however, that there is no good substitute for unhindered,<br />
direct access to a port capable of accommodating ocean-going<br />
supertankers.In the case of oil, the only firm project so far is to build a<br />
1,500-kilometers-long pipeline from Tengiz, Kazakhstan, to the Black<br />
Sea port of Novorossiysk just east of the Crimean peninsula.Aside from<br />
the fact that this project and its functioning will again depend on Russia’s<br />
goodwill, another drawback is that supertankers that routinely haul oil<br />
from the Persian Gulf are likely to be barred from the relatively narrow<br />
and vulnerable straits of Bosphorus and the Dardanelles (the specter of<br />
a supertanker spilling its cargo into the Golden Horn…).<br />
Thanks to its “central” position, Central Asia used to be the hub of<br />
world trade passing through the Silk Road network.The discovery of the<br />
maritime route between Atlantic Europe and the Orient at the dawn of<br />
the modern era turned this advantage of centrality in the Eurasian continent<br />
into the disadvantage of a landlocked area.With the end of the<br />
Cold War, we have heard much about the resurrected strategic and economic<br />
importance of a liberated Central Asia, often with references to<br />
the Silk Road and to the rediscovered advantages of the area’s “central-<br />
2 S.LeVine, “Iran opens big gas pipeline to neighbor, defying US,” New York Times, 30 December<br />
1997; LeVine quotes Julia Nanay, an analyst with the Washington-based Petroleum Finance<br />
Company: “It’s a victory for Iran over the United States, over Russia, and a victory for<br />
Turkmenistan as well, because it’s the first to get its reserves to market through a non-Russian<br />
pipeline.”
Independent Central Asian Republics 289<br />
ity.” Now, at the threshold of the third millennium, the drawbacks of<br />
barred access to maritime routes seem once more to haunt landlocked<br />
Central Asia whose centrality may become a liability rather than an<br />
asset.One potent compensation should be a modified intensification of<br />
trade and other relations with the area’s immediate neighbors – Russia,<br />
China, the Indian subcontinent, Iran.When discussing the Silk Road<br />
trade of antiquity, it was axiomatic to say that it was a trade of highpriced<br />
and easily transportable commodities – such as silk or china or<br />
spices.Yet even this trade did not quite hold ground when forced to<br />
compete with maritime routes.<br />
In the academic and philanthropic field, American universities and<br />
foundations have hosted a steady stream of individuals, delegations, and<br />
conferences invited or held to study a broad scale of matters ranging<br />
from the American way of democracy to business methods and technological<br />
know-how.On the United States side, a question mark has been<br />
the fate of Radio Liberty, a Munich-based organization sponsored by the<br />
United States government that for many years has broadcast news and<br />
programs to the non-Russian republics of the former Soviet Union, thus<br />
also to those of Central Asia; there is an Uzbek, a Kazakh, a Kyrgyz, a<br />
Turkmen, and a Tajik desk.The creation of Radio Liberty was based on<br />
the premise that its broadcasts were the only channel through which<br />
peoples ruled by Moscow could obtain objective and meaningful news.<br />
The collapse of the Soviet Union and the liberation of the republics have<br />
made Radio Liberty obsolete, some argue, but its future nevertheless<br />
seems assured.Together with its sister organization, Radio Free Europe,<br />
whose broadcasts have served what were once the Soviet satellites in<br />
Eastern Europe, it has only been scaled down and moved from Munich<br />
to Prague.A somewhat analogous organization has been the government-sponsored<br />
IREX (International Research Exchange; located at<br />
first in New York, then in Princeton, and since 1992 in Washington),<br />
which has supported academic research by American scholars in Eastern<br />
Europe and the Soviet Union and vice versa.During the Soviet period,<br />
the participation of Central Asia, though not unheard of, was rare; after<br />
its liberation, the area joined the organization’s activities with a vengeance.In<br />
contrast to Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty, IREX has not<br />
been scaled down but expanded since the events of 1991, and it now<br />
stands in the vanguard of the organizations sponsoring academic cooperation<br />
between Central Asia and the United States.<br />
The People’s Republic of China occupies a place of special importance<br />
among the Central Asian republics’ neighbors.First of all, its long
290 A history of Inner Asia<br />
border with the area as a whole – specifically, with Kazakhstan,<br />
Kyrgyzstan, and Tajikistan – is second in length only to that between the<br />
Russian Federation and Kazakhstan, and it dwarfs that between Central<br />
Asia and its other two neighbors, Iran and Afghanistan.This relative<br />
proximity and her current economic growth enhances China’s potential<br />
as Central Asia’s major trading partner, a fact perhaps further strengthened<br />
by a geo-economic context reminiscent of the historic Silk Road<br />
network of antiquity and the Middle Ages.A number of agreements<br />
between each of the republics and the Chinese government relating to<br />
commerce, communications, transportation, financial credit, and<br />
tourism have been signed since 1992.This progress is especially<br />
significant when placed in the context of a potentially vexing problem,<br />
that of the Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region or Chinese Turkestan.<br />
Chinese Turkestan presents a striking parallel, as we have seen, to<br />
Russian Turkestan, and the independence won by the Muslims of the<br />
latter area quite naturally revived the hopes of some of their Uighur<br />
kinsmen that they too might set up their own republic, an Uighuristan<br />
on a par with Kazakhstan, for example.The government of the People’s<br />
Republic of China, however, shows no sign of willingness to give up the<br />
country’s outlying ethnic areas, least of all Sinkiang.There are strategic,<br />
economic, political, historical, and demographic grounds for that; the<br />
last-named factor may in the long run be the most powerful one, for the<br />
Chinese minority in Sinkiang has risen to over 40 percent of the total<br />
population.The governments of the five Central Asian republics seem<br />
to have accepted this reality, and to have given priority to good relations<br />
with the Chinese government and overall cooperation with China.This<br />
was at least the tenor of the communiqués and agreements resulting<br />
from the official visit paid by the Chinese prime minister Li Peng to the<br />
republics of Central Asia in April 1994.One of the treaties signed<br />
confirms as definitive the 1,700–kilometer border between China (that<br />
is, Sinkiang) and Kazakhstan, laying to rest a problem that had been festering<br />
for several centuries, and was exacerbated during the Sino-Soviet<br />
dispute of the 1960s.<br />
Relations between Central Asia and other countries are also gathering<br />
momentum.Those between the republics and other Muslim countries,<br />
ranging from economic development to religious proselytism,<br />
naturally occupy a special place.A perhaps surprising dose of pragmatism<br />
seems to dominate relations with Iran, especially in the case of its<br />
closest Central Asian neighbor, Turkmenistan.The two countries, whose<br />
past was plagued by a bloody Sunni–Shii conflict and by slave raids, and
Independent Central Asian Republics 291<br />
whose present leaders rose to power through the antithetical (or at least<br />
superficially so) doctrines of godless Communism and theocratic Islam,<br />
have now discovered a common ground for economic, technical, and<br />
even cultural cooperation.On the other hand, more distant Saudi<br />
Arabia has endeavored to further the spiritual renaissance of the Central<br />
Asians; besides assisting with such specific measures as distribution of<br />
the Koran, the Saudi government attempted to finance the foundation<br />
of an Islamic university in Uzbekistan’s Fergana province, until the<br />
project was abandoned after the republic’s Supreme Court ruled that<br />
religiously slanted education is unconstitutional.Islam as propagated by<br />
Saudi representatives and money has received in Uzbekistan the label of<br />
Wahhabism and its adepts are called Wahhabis, so named after the fundamentalist<br />
religious movement that toward the end of the eighteenth<br />
century brought the Saudi dynasty to power.It is these missionaries and<br />
their adepts who seem to worry the Uzbeks, rather than any threat from<br />
an ever more pragmatic Iran.<br />
Quite naturally, relations between Central Asia’s four Turkic republics<br />
and Turkey occupy a place of exceptional importance.They range<br />
from the romantic reminiscences of a common past in the Altai mountains<br />
and the Orkhon valley to hard-headed questions of improved air<br />
links, economic development, and a switch, by the Central Asian Turks,<br />
to a Roman alphabet based on the one used in Turkey.Above all, the<br />
volume of personal contacts, ranging from a tour of the Turkic republics<br />
by President Turgut Özal in 1992 and five “summits” of Turkic<br />
republics (Ankara 1992, Istanbul 1994, Bishkek 1995, Tashkent 1997,<br />
Astana 1998), to rising numbers of Turkish businessmen active in<br />
Central Asia and of young Central Asian Turks studying at Turkish universities,<br />
is tantamount to the dream of pan-Turkism that had inspired<br />
earlier generations of nationalists and frightened Moscow.The effects of<br />
this community of feeling and planning have been positive, and they<br />
promise even more for the future, if the present realism of Central Asian<br />
leaders holds fast; they have invariably emphasized the fact that the new<br />
trend should not be exclusionary or directed against any outsider – a<br />
somewhat contradictory claim, but a far cry from the calls for a Greater<br />
Turkestan voiced by some nationalists in the early decades of the twentieth<br />
century.It is significant that the word “Turkestan” appears to have<br />
lost its former political connotation, and is used only as a geographical<br />
or cultural concept.It is a sense of common ties and interests that<br />
appears almost to force itself upon them, based as it is on the reality of<br />
ethnolinguistic and cultural identity, geopolitics, history, and economics.
292 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Cooperation is the rule now, and the economic union formed by<br />
Uzbekistan, Kazakhstan, and Kyrgyzstan in the first months of 1994 is<br />
only the most visible example of this evolution.This does not mean that<br />
the area is devoid of disputes, chiefly ethnic and economic.The most<br />
dramatic cases were those of Meskhetian Turks in Uzbekistan’s Fergana<br />
province who were attacked by Uzbek “hooligans” in June 1989, and of<br />
a large Uzbek minority in the Osh region of Kyrgyzstan, which in 1990<br />
became the target of bloody assaults by the Kyrgyz populace.The<br />
Meskhetians once lived in Soviet Armenia along the Turkish border, and<br />
were deported by Stalin during the war years; the recent trouble made<br />
most of them leave Uzbekistan and move to Russia.As for the<br />
Uzbek–Kyrgyz dispute, it remained localized; condemned by both<br />
countries’ governments and citizenry, it was speedily resolved.<br />
An obvious and potentially troublesome question is relations between<br />
Tajikistan and the four Turkic republics.So far it has been overshadowed<br />
by the civil war that erupted in 1992.The complexity of its causes,<br />
parties involved, goals pursued, conflicting reports and interpretations<br />
offered defies convincing conclusions, but one important consensus<br />
appears certain: that of the leaders of the other four Central Asian<br />
republics and of the Russian Federation regarding the need to prevent<br />
the possibility of a militant Islamic takeover.Their fears may have been<br />
unfounded or unjust, but there is no way of knowing that for sure; it may<br />
indeed be that their intervention has played a decisive role in the prevention<br />
of any such takeover, and at any rate it is likely to continue doing so<br />
for some time to come.The crisis has also deepened the perceived<br />
difference between the Tajiks and the Turks; why has this chaos occurred<br />
in Tajikistan, and not in the other republics of Central Asia? Is it just<br />
because of the proximity of Afghanistan, or have the Tajik Muslims<br />
been more receptive to inspiration from that quarter because of their<br />
Iranian identity? In the long run and in the context discussed here,<br />
however, there may yet surface a more intractable problem: that of the<br />
Tajik minorities (some Tajiks would say majorities) in such cities as<br />
Samarkand and Bukhara, or even of the entire Zarafshan vallley, and of<br />
the Uzbek minority in western Tajikistan.<br />
Problems of an economic nature arising from the question of how to<br />
manage the distribution of vital water resources may also prove vexing.<br />
Turkmenistan’s aforementioned Karakum canal has tapped the Amu<br />
Darya so heavily that it is blamed by the Uzbeks for the catastrophic desiccation<br />
of the Aral Sea and the plight of Uzbekistan’s agricultural districts<br />
near the river’s delta; the Turkmen government, however, has so
Independent Central Asian Republics 293<br />
far been reluctant to accept their neighbor’s proposals to review the<br />
existing situation, a legacy of the Soviet era.Some have made the sensible<br />
proposal that the Karakum canal be eliminated altogether.Besides<br />
debilitating the Amu Darya, the canal also wastes much of the precious<br />
water because of primitive or mismanaged technology (most of its<br />
course lacks lining, hence considerable seepage or flooding in places<br />
where the water is not needed), a problem characteristic of many irrigation<br />
projects carried out in the Soviet period.<br />
Each of the five republics now has a new constitution that guarantees<br />
the familiar political and human rights as understood in terms of<br />
Western democracy, and although, as we have pointed out, the innovation<br />
has so far had little practical application, the stage is set.Meanwhile<br />
all five republics are struggling to survive the economic crisis brought<br />
about by the transition from central planning and state ownership to<br />
market economy and privatization.The struggle and its prospective<br />
outcome are inevitably affected by similar processes in other parts of the<br />
former Soviet Union, particularly the Russian Federation, but there are<br />
grounds for optimism.<br />
The area abounds in mineral and agricultural wealth; the value of<br />
Uzbekistan’s gold, copper, and zinc deposits has been estimated at $3<br />
trillion, and gold deposits in Kyrgyzstan appear promising; the aforementioned<br />
oil of Kazakhstan, natural gas of Turkmenistan, hydroelectric<br />
power of Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan, and cotton of Uzbekistan,<br />
Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan are other examples.An abundant and<br />
well-trained labor force and an advantageous geo-economic position<br />
(here again, the Silk Road may not be just a romantic saga 3 ) are the ideal<br />
complement to these natural assets.The problems, however, are also formidable.Aside<br />
from the birth pangs of a new system, the area faces two<br />
major challenges: ecological and demographic.The plight of the Aral<br />
Sea has become familiar to anyone following the news media, and it is<br />
only the most visible case of catastrophic abuse of water resources; the<br />
related ill effects of cotton monoculture propped up by chemical fertilizers<br />
and pesticides have attained similar notoriety.Total disregard of<br />
these dangers was one of the hallmarks of the Communist era (and not<br />
only in Central Asia; zones of pollution and moonscapes of man-made<br />
wasteland littered the rest of the empire and its satellites in Eastern<br />
Europe as well) and has become one of its worst legacies: for basic economic<br />
and psychological reasons, the solution of the problem will be<br />
3 See, however, our aforementioned qualifications.
294 A history of Inner Asia<br />
slow and costly, and one of the problems will be who should sacrifice<br />
how much for the common good.We have already referred to<br />
Turkmenistan’s reluctance to reduce the volume of water diverted from<br />
the Amu Darya into its Karakum canal.A conference on the Aral Sea<br />
held in Tashkent in September 1995 failed to elicit much commitment<br />
from any of the participants, but was enlivened by the Uzbek President<br />
Karimov’s proposal that a once contemplated but then scrapped plan to<br />
divert the Siberian rivers Irtysh and Ob to Central Asia be revived.<br />
The problem is made worse by the high birthrate of the Muslim population,<br />
especially that of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan.If unchecked, this<br />
too could bring disaster: rising numbers of young men deprived of prospects<br />
for decent employment easily fall prey to proponents of simplistic<br />
radical solutions.In Central Asia, the question of birth control has an<br />
absurd past and an intriguing future.The Soviet authorities, far from<br />
promoting birth control, used to encourage and reward high birthrates.<br />
A partial reversal occurred in the Brezhnev era, but the timid attempts<br />
to advocate planned parenthood had no effect where it was needed the<br />
most, among the tradition-bound rural population.In the future, acceptance<br />
and practice of birth control may be further stymied by a resurrected<br />
Islamic militancy.Advocates of a more rational approach at the<br />
July 1994 World Population Conference held in Cairo were frustrated by<br />
the uncompromising attitude of Roman Catholic and Islamic hierarchies<br />
and even by the negative stance from such quarters as the United<br />
States government (no doubt alert at that point to the voices of domestic<br />
fundamentalism).It is a paradox of our time that the problem of<br />
overpopulation, which in many parts of the world is approaching catastrophic<br />
proportions comparable only to those of the degradation of the<br />
environment (and related to it), receives the least attention from most<br />
governments.<br />
An intriguing question is the routinely cited shortage of a qualified<br />
indigenous workforce.An inordinate proportion of managerial, technical,<br />
and skilled jobs is said to be occupied by “Europeans,” chiefly<br />
Russians and Ukrainians, while the natives are spread over the broad<br />
spectrum of unskilled and service occupations.The reality is more<br />
complex.First of all, the available statistics as well as informal reports<br />
suggest that the Central Asians were by no means “shut out” from the<br />
better occupations.They admittedly had to overcome certain handicaps<br />
before acquiring the necessary education or training and becoming<br />
competitive: the traditions of rural life and ignorance of Russian kept<br />
many at a disadvantage in comparison with the mostly urban
Independent Central Asian Republics 295<br />
Europeans.Those willing and able to buck the tradition had ample<br />
opportunity to acquire the necessary training and competitiveness, and<br />
many did.To name just a few examples: by training, the Kazakh<br />
President Nazarbaev is a mining engineer; the Kyrgyz President Akaev<br />
is a nuclear physicist; the renowned Kyrgyz writer Aitmatov is a veterinarian.The<br />
disparity is thus probably not a result of deliberate discrimination<br />
but of a force of inertia on both sides: tradition of a mostly rural<br />
population on the native side, convenience of an already qualified workforce<br />
on the mostly “European” employer’s side, occupational preferences<br />
among the educated Central Asians all have played their specific<br />
roles.This is borne out by the fact that in the fields congenial to Central<br />
Asians, they became well represented (or sometimes even “over-represented”):<br />
in the humanities and social sciences of the academe, in politics<br />
and journalism.
Amur<br />
Railroad Moscow-Beijing<br />
via Ulaanbaatar<br />
I I I I I I I<br />
RUSSIA<br />
Lake<br />
Baikal<br />
Angara<br />
I I I I I I I I I I<br />
RUSSIA<br />
Chita<br />
Big Khem<br />
Yenisei<br />
Argun<br />
Ulan-Ude<br />
I I<br />
I I I I I I I I I I<br />
I<br />
Irkutsk<br />
Irtysh<br />
Ka Khem<br />
Kyzyl<br />
Onon<br />
Kiakhta<br />
I I I I I I I I<br />
CHINA<br />
Ulaanbaatar<br />
I I I<br />
Choibalsan<br />
I<br />
Kerufen<br />
I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I I<br />
Uliasutai<br />
Karakorum<br />
Kobdo<br />
Black Irtysh<br />
Railroad<br />
to Beijing<br />
G o b i<br />
Dalan Dzadgad<br />
G o b i<br />
Mongolia<br />
Map 13 Mongolia
chapter twenty-one<br />
The Republic of Mongolia<br />
When the Uzbeks and other Central Asians declared independence in<br />
1991, it was not only a liberation from Russian rule but also from a tyrannical<br />
ideology.The significance of the latter dimension is illustrated by<br />
the case of Mongolia.This Soviet satellite did not need to declare independence,<br />
for it had enjoyed the privilege of being independent since its<br />
creation in 1921, if only because it was Moscow’s faithful ally not by<br />
force but by choice.It did need, however, the latter liberation, and it too<br />
attained it thanks to the bloodless revolution unwittingly unleashed by<br />
Mikhail Gorbachev.<br />
The Communist system, which had initially wrought transformations<br />
beneficial to Mongolia, had begun to stagnate in a way similar to its evolution<br />
in the Soviet Union; and here the country’s status as Russia’s<br />
mirror image once more brought good dividends when first glasnost and<br />
perestroika jumped the border and spread to Mongolia as well, and then<br />
again when the collapse of Communism in Russia allowed the Mongols<br />
too to shed this straitjacket.<br />
brief history since 1911<br />
We have related in Chapter 13 how between 1691 and 1911 Mongolia<br />
was a personal dependency of the Manchu Dynasty ruling China.<br />
Toward the end of that period it also began to be called Outer Mongolia<br />
(an appellation somewhat resented by the Mongols themselves), in contrast<br />
to Inner Mongolia, the territory along its southeastern border<br />
inhabited by Mongols but administratively integrated into China.<br />
Emancipation from Manchu rule occurred in 1911 with that dynasty’s<br />
collapse and replacement by the Republic of China.Chinese claims to<br />
suzerainty over Mongolia reappeared, however, by 1915, and in 1919<br />
Beijing’s troops reoccupied the country.They were driven out in 1921 at<br />
the end of a bizarre conflict that pitted three sides against each other:<br />
297
298 A history of Inner Asia<br />
the Chinese, White Russian troops led by a Baltic German, Baron<br />
Ungern-Sternberg who assumed the role of a Mongol patriot, and joint<br />
Soviet-Russian and Mongol troops whose native leaders espoused the<br />
Bolshevik cause.The Russo-Mongol forces won, and the new government<br />
proclaimed independence on 11 July 1921.<br />
Although officially Mongolia has been a republic only since 1924,<br />
when the theocratic head of state, the “living Buddha” of Urga died, in<br />
practice the modern state was founded in 1921.The period from 1921<br />
to 1991 can thus be considered that of the Mongolian People’s Republic,<br />
a Communist state closely imitating its Soviet model, and the transformation<br />
of Mongol society during those years was radical.At the inception<br />
of this period the country was home to a confederation of tribal<br />
groups governed by a two-pronged aristocracy of lay tribal and Buddhist<br />
church leaders, and served by several types of commoners (arat) and<br />
semi-serfs (shabit).Property was concentrated in the hands of the elite,<br />
and consisted mainly of livestock and grazing rights, and only secondarily<br />
of land under cultivation; crafts and commerce led a marginal existence<br />
in the few towns that existed, or at the lamaseries.Lamaseries or<br />
monasteries of the Yellow Hat Buddhist church were the centers of economic<br />
power, spiritual and political authority, and cultural life.Both men<br />
and women could enter monastic life, and although celibacy was not as<br />
absolute as claimed by theory, it was important enough to contribute to<br />
a demographic decline which was so serious that some observers were<br />
predicting the extinction of the Mongols as a nation: only about 651,000<br />
souls were estimated to people the country in 1925.This decline was not<br />
caused by monasticism alone; birthrate appears to have been generally<br />
low among Eurasian nomads.The advantage of the sedentary Chinese<br />
and Russians, for example, over their neighbors, the nomadic Mongols<br />
and Turks before the latter’s sedentarization, is striking.Nevertheless, the<br />
rapid rate of this decline, specifically in this increasingly lamaistic<br />
society, has been partly attributed to the exceptionally widespread monasticism,<br />
and to the concomitant spread of syphilis.<br />
Native cadres educated even with a minimum of modern methods<br />
were almost non-existent before 1921; those few who had such education<br />
obtained it mainly through Russian schools or preceptors across the<br />
border in Siberia.Among these were Sükhbaatar (1893–1923) and<br />
Choibalsan (1895–1952), the two founders of modern Mongolia.<br />
Mongolia’s official status as a state changed in the course of the<br />
seventy years between 1921 and 1991 through several stages, the least<br />
real but most curious milestone occurring in 1945.Until that year, the
The Republic of Mongolia 299<br />
country, although a People’s Republic, an explicitly sovereign state,<br />
officially remained under Chinese suzerainty: this was a contradiction<br />
verging on the absurd, for at the same time Mongolia’s main supporter<br />
and de facto suzerain was the Soviet Union.In June 1940 the Great<br />
National Khural (parliament) adopted a new constitution, further consolidating<br />
the 1924 constitution’s clause establishing Mongolia as a<br />
People’s Republic; it did not renounce Chinese suzerainty, however, an<br />
act that only took place in 1945 through a plebiscite in which the<br />
Mongol people overwhelmingly approved its abrogation.<br />
The political, economic, social, and cultural transformation of<br />
Mongolia was thus from 1921 on inspired and in many ways directed by<br />
the country’s senior partner and protector, the Soviet Union.The sole<br />
native possessor of political authority, the Mongolian People’s<br />
Revolutionary Party, following its model, the Communist Party of the<br />
Soviet Union, acted through a government and a variety of channels to<br />
effect the transformation.On the political level, the process, probably<br />
designed to ensure unflinching loyalty to the person or persons forming<br />
the Party’s power center, displayed some of the aspects of the Soviet<br />
model, including show trials staged in the late 1930s by Choibalsan<br />
(often referred to as “the Mongol Stalin,” while Sükhbaatar has been<br />
called “the Mongol Lenin”) against selected “enemies of the people” (in<br />
fact, Choibalsan’s potential rivals) in imitation of the trials staged by<br />
Stalin in Moscow.<br />
On the social and cultural levels, the elimination of the lay and<br />
lamaistic aristocracy, and the suppression of religion led the roster.All<br />
lamaseries, including the earliest and most prestigious one, Erdene Zu at<br />
Kharkhorin (Qaraqorum) near the erstwhile “capital” of the Mongol<br />
empire, were closed, although Gandan, the Buddhist temple at Ulan<br />
Bator, was reopened, chiefly for propagandistic and touristic purposes.<br />
A massive campaign of education and indoctrination was mounted,<br />
aimed at spreading literacy, general education, devotion to Marxist-<br />
Leninist ideology propagated by the Party, and renouncement of the<br />
previously so pervasive Buddhist religion.In 1940, a new alphabet based<br />
on Cyrillic replaced the traditional Mongol script; this change was<br />
beneficial insofar as it equipped the Mongols with a system better suited<br />
to the phonetic structure of their language, but it also followed the<br />
double goal of further cementing their ties with the Soviet Union while<br />
creating yet another barrier between them and their past, and incidentally<br />
also between them and the non-Soviet modern Western world,<br />
which uses the Roman script.Significantly, a similar step occurred in
300 A history of Inner Asia<br />
1940 in Soviet Central Asia, where all the five republics switched from<br />
the Arabic or Roman alphabet to Cyrillic; a related aspect of this process<br />
was the study of Russian, which became an integral part of education.<br />
Public health was improved by phasing out the traditional native or<br />
Tibetan medicine and replacing it with modern medicine made freely<br />
accessible, like education, to all citizens.<br />
As in Kazakhstan, collectivization caused great hardships during its<br />
initial phase between 1930 and 1932, but unlike there it was suspended,<br />
and it then proceeded more cautiously while retaining some aspects<br />
specific to Mongolia.Thus even in 1959, a law promulgating the function<br />
of the goskhoz (state-owned livestock or agricultural enterprise, an<br />
approximate imitation of the Soviet sovkhoz) and the negdel (its cooperative<br />
counterpart, an imitation of the Soviet kolkhoz) as the obligatory<br />
establishments to which citizens engaged in herding or agriculture had<br />
to belong, allowed a family to own a certain number of beasts: up to fifty<br />
in the north, up to seventy-five in the Gobi.These steps were accompanied<br />
by further measures leading to specialization of herders according<br />
to the livestock species, improvement of the livestock’s quality, and other<br />
factors; especially beneficial was the building of winter shelters stocked<br />
with fodder, a measure that reduced the ravages of weather, especially<br />
of dzut.The importance of the livestock economy for Mongolia is illustrated<br />
by the number of animals: by 1965, it reached 24 million (the role<br />
of herding in Mongolia is illustrated by this number, when we compare<br />
it with the number of inhabitants, which by that year had barely risen<br />
above 2 million).Agriculture, previously marginal, made great strides<br />
during this period.Its relative novelty is illustrated by the fact that in<br />
1965, 70 percent of the harvest was produced by newly developed goskhozes<br />
and negdels.Cereals, fodder plants, potatoes, and legumes have<br />
been the principal crops.<br />
Even newer than agriculture was industry.Planned and fostered centrally<br />
by the government, it drew chiefly on the two main local resources<br />
– livestock and mineral wealth.Its growth in turn stimulated the appearance<br />
of another new feature, urbanization.Besides Urga, Uliasutai, and<br />
Kobdo, there were virtually no towns before the period under discussion.<br />
Urga owed its prominence to the fact that the Jebtsundamba-qutuqtu,<br />
the chief lama, had resided there since 1779, and that in 1911 the last<br />
incumbent was proclaimed head of state; yet it was still little more than<br />
an agglomeration of yurts around the “Living Buddha’s” residence and<br />
a few other official buildings when Mongolia became a People’s<br />
Republic after the last lama’s death in 1924.Renamed as Ulan Bator
The Republic of Mongolia 301<br />
(Ulaanbaatar in Mongolian, “Red Hero”), the Mongol capital has since<br />
then become a sprawling modern city and an industrial center;<br />
Choibalsan, Darkhan, and Erden are the other most prominent examples.Administrative<br />
structure and population increase have also contributed<br />
to the appearance of an urban center in each of the eighteen<br />
(eventually twenty-one) aimags, the administrative provinces of<br />
Mongolia.In 1949, Ulan Bator was linked to the Transsiberian railroad<br />
by a branch built from Ulan-Ude, and in 1955 this line was extended to<br />
link up with the Chinese network, thus producing the shortest rail connection<br />
between Moscow and Beijing.<br />
Until the early 1960s, Mongolia’s only diplomatic and economic partners<br />
were the Soviet Union and its satellites, and China.We have said<br />
that Mongolia was Russia’s only willing satellite.This resulted from<br />
several factors, the foremost being the country’s Chinese experience: the<br />
danger of being overwhelmed by China just as Inner Mongolia had<br />
been, first militarily and then demographically (this situation presented<br />
an analogy to that of northern Kazakhstan with respect to Russia, where<br />
the Kazakhs faced a similar danger from their Slavic neighbor; unlike<br />
there and elsewhere, however, Russia never invaded Mongolia against<br />
her will, and there had never been any influx of Russian settlers);<br />
another reason was a relatively fair economic cooperation and assistance,<br />
again in contrast to the Soviet Union’s other dependencies and<br />
satellites, where the relationship often included a hefty dose of colonial<br />
exploitation; and finally, it was Soviet troops that helped the Mongol<br />
army repel a Japanese attempt to invade the eastern tip of the country<br />
in 1939.<br />
Mongolia thus benefited from the new political and social order introduced<br />
in 1921, and from the support that saved her from absorption by<br />
China, but the price she paid was high.It included the familiar evils of<br />
an enforced monolithic ideology and the suppression of freedom.The<br />
harm that such systems can do by forcing the human spirit into artificial<br />
molds is well known, and it did not spare Mongolia either.Another<br />
development was the now commonly observed fact that beyond a<br />
certain point, the initially remarkable economic growth and social<br />
progress directed from a rigid center begin to lose their momentum and<br />
to give place to increasing contradictions, corruption, and stagnation.<br />
Many Mongol leaders seem to have been aware of these problems by<br />
the time Mikhail Gorbachev’s reforms made it possible for the Soviet<br />
Union’s satellites to launch their own reforms, and this led to the aforementioned<br />
changes that by 1992 had transformed Mongolia into a
302 A history of Inner Asia<br />
multiparty parliamentary democracy favoring free enterprise and a<br />
market economy.<br />
In 1946, one year after the abrogation of Chinese suzerainty,<br />
Mongolia tried to become a member of the newly formed United<br />
Nations Organization.The attempt failed, chiefly due to the opposition<br />
of Western democracies led by the United States, on the grounds that<br />
the candidate was not a genuinely independent state.This could not but<br />
reinforce the isolation of Mongolia during the worst years of the Cold<br />
War, perpetuating the symbolism of the officially abandoned label of<br />
“Outer” that had made the country appear so remote to the rest of the<br />
world.The relative liberalization introduced by Khrushchev eased the<br />
tension between the West and the Soviet Union, and the success of a<br />
second attempt made by Mongolia in 1961 was one of the results and a<br />
harbinger of more changes to come.In 1963 Great Britain established<br />
diplomatic relations with Mongolia, the first Western democracy to do<br />
so, and was followed in this by France (1964) and other countries, the<br />
United States finally following suit.Only after 1991, however, did<br />
Mongolia’s contacts with the wider world enter upon a broader avenue<br />
free from political or doctrinal inhibitions.
Summary and conclusion<br />
We can summarize the transformations that took place in Inner Asia<br />
during the last decade in the following manner: the five Soviet republics<br />
of Central Asia have attained a double liberation – from colonial domination<br />
and from Communism; Mongolia, already independent, from<br />
Communism; Sinkiang, however, has experienced neither – except that<br />
Marxist-Leninist dogma has acquired a different ring in pragmatic<br />
China.<br />
Mikhail Gorbachev’s accession to power, we have suggested, greatly<br />
accelerated and modified a process that otherwise might still be the<br />
property of political scientists and Kremlinologists forecasting the<br />
future.A special feature of the Gorbachev years – 1985 to 1991 – were<br />
several cross-currents that clashed in Central Asia and created a unique<br />
political and cultural climate.This climate could be labeled “Central<br />
Asian Spring,” for during those few years its citizens attained a degree<br />
of internal freedom unheard of before.This freedom has been considerably<br />
reduced since then – in other words, since the republics became<br />
independent.<br />
Gorbachev’s campaign against “corruption” in Central Asia was<br />
overshadowed, from a historian’s vantage point, by yet another attempt<br />
to stave off nationalism there.It might have succeeded – for a time – if<br />
this statesman had had recourse to the formidable coercive apparatus of<br />
the Soviet state which was still in place at the time of his accession.<br />
Glasnost and perestroika declawed this apparatus, and the Central Asians,<br />
instead of withdrawing into a shell of sullen or sycophantic submission<br />
as they had been wont to do, counterattacked.By 1989 they had won<br />
the first and most critical round.In the short span of two to three years,<br />
they put Moscow on the defensive, accusing it of the evils of colonial<br />
conquest and exploitation, of destroying their countries’ environment<br />
and people’s health, of forcing on them a falsified version of their<br />
history.<br />
303
304 A history of Inner Asia<br />
A significant aspect of this counterattack was the fact that it was led<br />
mainly by the indigenous intellectuals – journalists, academicians, professionals.The<br />
politicians – professional Communists and government<br />
bureaucrats – mostly adopted a wait-and-see attitude, unsure of what<br />
the new climate of glasnost and perestroika, which now had also spread to<br />
Central Asia, would ultimately mean for their situation.<br />
One of the novelties was that Central Asians were not only free to criticize<br />
Russia and Communist ideology, but also to demand democratic<br />
freedoms in their own republics.Political pluralism and a free press<br />
began to make their unprecedented appearance, just as they were doing<br />
in Russia and elsewhere in the expiring empire.An Uzbek movement<br />
called Birlik (Unity) was founded in November 1988.Led by Abdurahim<br />
Pulatov, a scientist, it was on the cutting edge of a campaign to make<br />
Uzbek the official language of the republic.The campaign was crowned<br />
with success when the Uzbek Supreme Soviet adopted a resolution to<br />
this effect on 21 October 1989.The movement demanded more,<br />
however: genuine democracy, and it did not hesitate to take on the<br />
Communist Party of Uzbekistan.Birlik stopped short of claiming the<br />
status of a political party, but that role was soon assumed by a group of<br />
intellectuals led by the poets Muhammad Salikh and Erkin Vahidov, who<br />
in April 1990 founded the Erk Democratic Party (“Erk” means<br />
“freedom” or “[people’s] will,” a favorite concept for naming political<br />
movements at the dawn of Central Asian independence).Erk gave every<br />
sign of offering the kind of constructive opposition to the ruling<br />
Democratic Party (as the Communist Party of Uzbekistan renamed itself<br />
after the collapse of the Soviet Union) that the country so desperately<br />
needed in order to become a healthy pluralistic democracy.Islam<br />
Karimov and the new political Democrats at first seemed to accept the<br />
new rules of the game, and Muhammad Salikh could even run for<br />
President in December 1991.He garnered 12 percent of the votes,<br />
against the 86 percent received by Karimov.How fair the election was<br />
is hard to say.What matters is the fact that Salikh could run without<br />
being excessively intimidated.Had that precious amount of freedom<br />
persisted, he might have done better next time, if the voters decided that<br />
new people should be given a chance to search for new solutions.Since<br />
1992, however, those holding power have made their position virtually<br />
impregnable by means of decrees, legislation, and intimidation, and the<br />
initially promising alternatives have been pushed to the margin of political<br />
and public life.Erk is now withering as a party that has been refused
Summary and conclusion 305<br />
official registration, and whose members have been under constant<br />
threat of prosecution and intermittent prison terms.<br />
Genuine democrats thus soon ran into stiff resistance from the Uzbek<br />
political elite, but during the unique period of glasnost and its flickering<br />
afterglow in the first year of independence they could afford to take risks<br />
because of glasnost emanating from Moscow.This was the greatest irony:<br />
Moscow, which had just recently tried to once more cow the Uzbeks into<br />
a denationalized submission, now cast a protective shadow over those of<br />
their leaders who dared to challenge a system it had installed there in the<br />
first place.<br />
The situation was similar in the other republics.In Turkmenistan a<br />
movement called Agzybirlik (Unity; a synonym of the Uzbek Birlik,<br />
except that Turkmen adds the word agyz, “mouth, voice,” to the term<br />
based on the numeral bir, “one,” augmented by the noun-forming suffix<br />
-lik; thus perhaps translatable as “Unison”) made its appearance, and<br />
had a comparable agenda and subsequent fate.In Kazakhstan a similar<br />
movement chose the name Azat, “Free” (one could have expected rather<br />
its nominal derivation, azattyk = freedom; it is a synonym of erk, but in<br />
contrast to that genuinely Turkic word it has a Persian etymology), while<br />
the Kyrgyz simply called their analogous association “Kyrgyzstan.” The<br />
Tajiks did not stay behind either, and one of their new parties took the<br />
suggestive name Rastokhez, “Renaissance.” Moreover, these were not<br />
the only new associations or political parties.Others sprang up, and their<br />
number, type, ethnic coloring, effectiveness, and ultimate fate have<br />
varied from republic to republic.By and large, however, they belong to<br />
the same general political process which we have proposed to view as a<br />
Central Asian Spring, a phenomenon that celebrated its all too brief<br />
florescence between 1988 and 1992.Democracy, human rights, and economic<br />
recovery seemed to be within reach during those years.These<br />
hopes have dimmed since then.To a considerable extent this was inevitable,<br />
and similar retreats from the initial euphoria of liberation could<br />
be seen in most other parts of the defunct Soviet empire.Nevertheless,<br />
a disturbingly widening chasm between Central Asia and such countries<br />
as Russia, Poland, Hungary, or Georgia has made its appearance.On<br />
the Central Asian side there is a troubling evolution toward autocracy.<br />
Liberated from the restrictive force of glasnost imposed upon them<br />
during the final years of membership in the Soviet Union, Islam Karimov<br />
and Saparmurad Niyazov, the presidents of Uzbekistan and<br />
Turkmenistan, have become virtual dictators, throwing the dissenters
306 A history of Inner Asia<br />
into jail, driving the opposition underground, or forcing those who<br />
escape into exile.Multiparty democracy and a free press have gone by the<br />
board, and when asked about these policies, the two leaders answer that<br />
Western-style democracy does not suit their societies or that their people<br />
are not ready for it.Law and order and stability are the path to prosperity<br />
and happiness, they say, and point to countries like China or those of<br />
Southeast Asia as examples of this alternative political philosophy.<br />
While in Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan the screws have been tightened<br />
since 1992 or even earlier, things at first appeared brighter in<br />
Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan.Political pluralism, freedom of expression,<br />
and the public policies of presidents Nursultan Nazarbaev and Askar<br />
Akaev indicated that these two countries were on the “Western”<br />
(however reluctantly we use this term; “First World,” obviously, would<br />
not work) side of the aforementioned chasm.In recent years, however,<br />
ominous changes have appeared there as well, and in 1998 we must<br />
reluctantly admit that Kazakhstan and Kyrgystan too may be moving<br />
toward excessive authoritarianism.<br />
In all the five republics, the trend toward authoritarian rule has been<br />
compounded by the aforementioned feature of tribalism and localism.<br />
While in the Soviet period it may have performed the role of an often<br />
salutary bulwark against a mighty but baffled alien, it could now become<br />
a divisive force braking the desirable evolution toward democratic consensus,<br />
or even tearing a country asunder.Kyrgyzstan is one example.<br />
Askar Akaev may be its President, but he also represents both the republic’s<br />
north and the tribe of Sary Bagysh; people from central areas<br />
(Jalalabad) and the south apparently feel shortchanged, and there have<br />
been rumors of demands for autonomy or even secession.Only time will<br />
tell whether such factionalisms can become fatally disruptive.Even<br />
countries with highly developed democratic traditions must live with<br />
their forms of factionalism – class, money, regions with differences of<br />
vested interest and agendas adversely affecting the unifying ideal.<br />
In Tajikistan, civil war and guerrilla activities have been on the one<br />
hand spillovers from the religious war raging in neighboring<br />
Afghanistan, and on the other, a lingering conflict between the<br />
Communist clique still imbedded in the government and its various<br />
opponents.According to some observers, however, both religion and<br />
Communism play only a second fiddle in this multifaceted contest<br />
between regional and tribal factions led by warlords some of whom are<br />
little more than professional bandits taking hostages for ransom money.<br />
There is the north (Khujand) pitted against the south (Gulob) and
Summary and conclusion 307<br />
center/east (Garm), aside from the ethnically centrifugal Badakhshan<br />
(the entire east of Tajikistan) and the large Uzbek minority along the<br />
border with Uzbekistan around the regional center of Tursunzod<br />
(besides an assertive pocket near Khujand).The fact remains that in the<br />
welter of contending currents, the Communists on the government side<br />
and Muslim clerics on that of the opposition have given the contest a<br />
distinctive tinge absent from the other Central Asian republics.The<br />
present government is headed by President Imamali Rakhmanov (b.<br />
1952), 1 who rose as a Party apparatchik during the pre-glasnost years.In<br />
December 1992 (thus at the dawn of the post-glasnost period), as chairman<br />
of the Supreme Soviet, Rakhmanov virulently denounced the<br />
opposition highlighted by such leaders as Ali Akbar Turaevich<br />
Kahhorov, better known as Akbar Turajonzoda (or Turadzhonzoda, if<br />
we transliterate the name from Russian Cyrillic; b.1954).Turajonzoda<br />
was in 1988 elected to head the Qoziyot, Muslim Spiritual Board of<br />
Tajikistan, hence his title qozi (more exactly qozi kalon, “The principal [lit.<br />
‘great’] judge”) also prefixed – often with the capital Q – to his name.<br />
From the Islamic angle, Turajonzoda had impeccable credentials.His<br />
father, Ishoni Turajon, was a murid (disciple) of Said Qalandarshoh, a<br />
Naqshbandi murshid (Sufi master) who at the beginning of the twentieth<br />
century had come to Tajikistan from Afghanistan.Turajon eventually<br />
succeeded his master as leader of the local Naqshbandi dervishes, hence<br />
also the honorific title ishon ([his] eminence, lit.“they”).Turajonzoda (lit.<br />
“the offspring of Turajon”) himself received excellent education in<br />
Islamic theology and jurisprudence: first at the Mir Arab madrasa in<br />
Bukhara, then at the Barak Khan madrasa in Tashkent, and finally at<br />
the University of Jordan in Amman, where he graduated with a degree<br />
in Islamic law.After his return he worked one year in the department of<br />
international relations of the Muslim Spiritual Board of Central Asia<br />
and Kazakhstan in Tashkent.His election to the Tajik qoziyot occurred<br />
in 1988, a year that happened to coincide with the fresh currents<br />
brought by glasnost and perestroika.Instead of remaining yet another<br />
(seemingly) docile Muslim cleric mindful of the strictures imposed by the<br />
system, Turajonzoda emerged as a vigorous leader of the Islamic community<br />
claiming its share of the public debate.Perhaps nobody could<br />
have then predicted the magnitude of the problems bound with his role<br />
1 Imamali Rakhmanov is the form of the name as it appears in Russian language media and as a<br />
result in most Western media.The Tajik form, Imomali Rahmonov (if we use E.Allworth’s transliteration<br />
system), has also begun to appear in the media.The dilemma which form to use in a<br />
book like ours is obvious, and it affects most Central Asian names.
308 A history of Inner Asia<br />
as the leading Islamic cleric, however.The Tajik intelligentsia – like that<br />
of the other Central Asian republics – turned out to be basically secular,<br />
and suspicious of the implications of an organized Islamic intervention<br />
in culture and politics.The international community, from Tashkent to<br />
Moscow to Washington, was no less wary, and has become ever more so<br />
since the victory of the Taliban in Afghanistan.The qozi himself endeavored<br />
to allay any fears, but could not quite escape the contradictions<br />
inherent in his cause.Although he paid homage to all the ideals of a<br />
democratic state, he did not distance himself from the idea of an eventual<br />
“Islamic Republic of Tajikistan.” This placed him at loggerheads<br />
with secular nationalists no less than with nervous officials in the US<br />
State Department, a situation that has been adroitly exploited by the<br />
resilient post-Soviet Communist establishment headed by Imamali<br />
Rakhmanov, now President of the republic.This paradox has been illustrated<br />
by the following poignant incident: when in June 1996 a conference<br />
sponsored by private civil rights groups convened in Washington,<br />
D.C., Turajonzoda was invited as one of the star guests. The Tajik qozi,<br />
however, was refused a visa.He by then resided primarily in Tehran as<br />
a member of the far-flung diaspora of Tajik opposition leaders, some<br />
there, some in Moscow, some in the West.Meanwhile unrest oscillating<br />
between guerrilla ambushes to civil war continued to rage in Tajikistan.<br />
With none of the adversaries able to prevail by force, negotiations<br />
between the government and the opposition whose parties and factions<br />
ultimately organized themselves in a common front called “United Tajik<br />
Opposition” and led by another cleric, Said Abdullo Nuri (seconded by<br />
Turajonzoda as deputy leader), have finally come to a successful conclusion.Brokered<br />
by well-meaning outsiders and held in such capitals as<br />
Tehran, Moscow, or Islamabad, they were crowned with success on 27<br />
June 1997, when in Moscow the Tajik President Imamali Rakhmanov<br />
and the United Tajik Opposition leader Said Abdullo Nuri signed the<br />
so-called Peace and National Reconciliation Accord.<br />
In Uzbekistan, the most pressing problem may be the aformentioned<br />
environmental crisis.If Karimov and his presidential neighbors are right<br />
and their authoritarian rule will provide the necessary framework for the<br />
so desperately needed economic recovery and ecological salvation of<br />
Central Asia, history’s verdict may yet concede them an honorable<br />
place.In order to succeed, however, they will need more than just a<br />
greater dose of personal integrity and law and order in the land.A whole<br />
infrastructure of efficient and reasonably honest officials, managers,<br />
engineeers, bankers, businessmen, entrepreneurs, agriculturalists, and
Summary and conclusion 309<br />
other professionals, and, last but not least, responsible defenders of<br />
human rights and family planning will be needed, and there are indications<br />
that at present such people are in alarmingly short supply.Western<br />
journalists and businessmen write and speak about a world where the<br />
rules are too different, or are not observed, or simply do not exist, and<br />
astonishment, frustration, loss of invested capital is the more standard<br />
experience they bring back from their visits or attempts to do business in<br />
or with Central Asia.The infrastructure that does exist there is the aforementioned<br />
traditional one of family, clan, tribe, locality, or informal<br />
groups of vested interests that had come to dominate the indigenous<br />
political and bureaucratic process in the final decades of Soviet rule.<br />
How soon and well these people will learn the ropes of the capitalist<br />
entrepreneurial system remains to be seen.The collapse of the old<br />
system created a chaos whose most palpable effects are inflation, disappearance<br />
of the social safety net (with the recurring problem of salaries,<br />
wages and especially pensions grossly limping behind the deadlines),<br />
appearance of both street and organized crime, and a general slowdown<br />
or shutdown of economic activities with rising unemployment.One of<br />
the all-pervading aspects of the Soviet system was total economic integration.We<br />
have insisted on the evils of this system: Central Asia delivered<br />
cotton and other materials at below-the-market prices dictated by<br />
Moscow and received in return food and products such as energy supplies.It<br />
may have been shortchanged in the process, but at least the<br />
system saved the people from unpredictable and debilitating shortages<br />
by providing them with food and other necessities – these too at<br />
artificially low prices, as we have suggested.Now at the system’s disintegration<br />
they repeatedly face such shortages, and the recurring crises<br />
create tensions between the authorities and their most articulate critics,<br />
the press and political opposition, aside from popular discontent and the<br />
refrain that “things used to be better.” These tensions have now led to a<br />
tendency toward repression and stifling of any criticism.Yet it is precisely<br />
open debate, criticism, experimentation that their societies need<br />
in order to identify the problems of inefficiency and corruption, to<br />
search for better answers, to become competitive both on the domestic<br />
and international level, to mature into a civil society.This open debate,<br />
which appeared possible in the final years of glasnost, has now been either<br />
severely curtailed (Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan) or has completely ceased<br />
(Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan).<br />
Nevertheless, there are grounds for hope that things may yet turn<br />
around in Central Asia.First of all, the repression has come nowhere
310 A history of Inner Asia<br />
near the extreme methods characteristic of the Stalinist past or of some<br />
current dictatorships around the world.There are no concentration<br />
camps, no death squads, no massacres, no systematic torture or routine<br />
disappearances of citizens, no man-made famines.There is no outrageous<br />
corruption by usurpers converting their countries’ wealth into personal<br />
accounts in Swiss banks or real estate in Europe and America.<br />
There are no intolerant ideologies proclaimed by presumptuous leaders<br />
and forced upon the citizens.There are no claims and counterclaims<br />
between states claiming chunks of each other’s territory or other assets<br />
and threatening war in case of non-compliance.As a general rule, in<br />
such basic respects as international relations, policies toward ethnic<br />
minorities, or intellectual freedom, the governments of Central Asia<br />
have displayed an undeniable dose of pragmatism, which is recognized<br />
even by many members of the opposition.In turn the opposition has<br />
refrained (with the partial exception of Tajikistan) from resorting to such<br />
terrorist methods as murdering officials and writers and tourists in<br />
downtown districts or slaughtering women and children in outlying villages.Islam<br />
has regained its glory but has not degenerated into fundamentalism<br />
or religious chauvinism, and nationalism has burst forth with<br />
a vengeance but has not turned into ethnic chauvinism.(The rash of<br />
often violent local disturbances caused by ethnic antagonisms has persuaded<br />
some observers that worse is to come.This may be so, but the<br />
relative fairness and firmness with which most clashes have been<br />
handled by the authorities could be an indication that saner forms of<br />
conflict resolution are just as likely.) Tolerance and compromise, not irredentism<br />
or interethnic strife predicted by various experts, have been<br />
the rule.Ethnic minorities are on the whole being treated fairly, and the<br />
governments have made efforts to assure the largest minority, the<br />
Russians, that they are safe and welcome to live as citizens in their republics<br />
(a demand that has been branded as “unfair” by many Russians is<br />
that as citizens of a Central Asian republic, they acquire a decent<br />
command of its principal language; one can sympathize with people<br />
confronted by such a challenge, but not necessarily agree that the<br />
demand is unfair).The once cherished dream of a Greater Turkestan<br />
has receded into oblivion as just that, a dream, and there is little evidence<br />
that it is being replaced by an aggressive and expansionist Uzbekistan<br />
expected by some observers.There is also little prospect of a Russia<br />
reconquering Central Asia in order to reconstitute her glorious empire.<br />
Most sides appear to be striving for realistic and mutually beneficial partnerships,<br />
dire predictions of post-Sovietologists notwithstanding.
Summary and conclusion 311<br />
It is in the domain of cultural liberation and education that Central<br />
Asians have benefited the most since the appearance of glasnost and<br />
attainment of independence.In sharp contrast to the Soviet period, the<br />
governments now abstain from ordering their citizens what to think or<br />
create.As long as they do not venture onto the political arena and challenge<br />
their leaders there, the intellectuals are free to cultivate their societies’<br />
cultural heritage or engage in their own scholarly or artistic<br />
pursuits as they wish.There is a staggering amount of work to do especially<br />
in the humanities and social sciences.It ranges from compiling<br />
objective and exhaustive histories of their countries, literatures, and cultures<br />
to producing school textbooks needed to replace the standard type<br />
that worshiped Lenin as the universal genius and benefactor of<br />
mankind and thanked Russians as the benefactors of Central Asians.<br />
Especially impressive, however, is the eagerness with which young<br />
Central Asians avail themselvers of the myriad educational opportunities<br />
at home and abroad that a mere decade ago were terra incognita or<br />
prohibita to them.Thousands are studying at various institutions in<br />
Turkey, Europe, and America, or are receiving professional training by<br />
international companies that do business with Central Asia.Their<br />
experience surely goes beyond the immediately utilitarian goals, for it<br />
helps them mature as citizens who will be the leaders of a new civil<br />
society.<br />
As in Russia, here too religion has at last been allowed to come forth<br />
undisguised in all its glory, and Central Asians – from presidents to peasants<br />
– have emphatically reclaimed their Islamic heritage.Nothing<br />
could illustrate more graphically the magnitude of the revolution than<br />
the following example: Karimov, the former First Secretary of a militantly<br />
atheistic Communist Party, swore in January 1992 his presidential<br />
oath on the Koran, and instead of making trips to Moscow for political<br />
blessing, went on a hajj to Mecca.The sincerity of this opportunist’s<br />
“conversion” may of course be no greater than his past profession of<br />
Communist faith.It does provide a framework, however, for a new<br />
climate in which others find their cultural and spiritual heritage truly<br />
fulfilling.An interesting parallel is the 1992 baptism of the former Soviet<br />
foreign minister Eduard Shevardnadze as Georgi in the Georgian<br />
Orthodox cathedral.Shevardnadze acquired a favorable image in the<br />
West at the time of his association with Mikhail Gorbachev and now as<br />
president of a promisingly democratic Georgia, but his past includes the<br />
positions of head of the Georgian KGB and First Secretary of the<br />
Communist Party of Georgia.
312 A history of Inner Asia<br />
The proliferation of new or reopened mosques testifies to the participation<br />
of the masses.Here again it should be no surprise if this religious<br />
renaissance assumes a variety of forms depending on the<br />
intellectual level and social milieu of the participants.They range from<br />
the chiefly cultural appreciation by sophisticated secular urbanites to the<br />
somewhat contradictory programs of the young dynamic clergy (such as<br />
the aforementioned Turajonzoda) to the semi-pagan rites of the masses<br />
making pilgrimage to any of the countless burial sites of semi-legendary<br />
saints.<br />
The leadership and the constituencies also meet on common ground<br />
when they venerate memories they had previously been forced to ignore,<br />
and disregard events they had previously been ordered to worship.An<br />
example is two sites in Turkmenistan, Göktepe and a nameless site by<br />
the railroad near Krasnovodsk.Göktepe was a fortress where in 1879<br />
Turkmen defenders defeated a Russian army under General Lazarev, a<br />
major success of Central Asian resistance against colonial conquest.The<br />
Russians had their revenge two years later, when in 1881 another force,<br />
better prepared and led by the able General Skobelev, stormed the fortress<br />
and inflicted horrendous losses on the Turkmens.Soviet historiography<br />
played down this tragedy as a minor glitch in the otherwise<br />
“voluntary unification of the Turkmens with Russia,” or better still,<br />
passed over it in silence.As for the nameless site near the Caspian, it witnessed<br />
a tragedy marking the still undecided pendulum swinging<br />
between the Reds and Whites in Azerbaijan and Turkmenistan: the execution<br />
of the “26 Baku commissars” on 20 September 1918.These<br />
Bosheviks fled Baku temporarily reconquered by the nationalists and<br />
boarded a steamer, hoping to reach Bolshevik-held Astrakhan.Instead,<br />
the captain steered the ship due east to Krasnovodsk, which was under<br />
the control of the Whites.The commissars – an assortment of Russians,<br />
Armenians, Georgians, and an Azerbaijani – were shot or bayoneted in<br />
a desolate location by the railroad, and they subsequently entered the<br />
pantheon of Soviet hagiography.The Turkmens were constantly<br />
reminded of the martyrdom that had taken place on their territory – in<br />
contrast to Göktepe which was better left unmentioned.With the arrival<br />
of glasnost, movements like Agzybirlik began to agitate for a commemoration<br />
of the real martyrdom.The still Communist leadership at<br />
first dragged its feet; once the Soviet empire fell and the Turkmen comrades<br />
became nationalists, however, they jumped on that bandwagon<br />
with gusto.The site, embellished with a newly errected memorial building,<br />
is now an important place of patriotic pilgrimage.
Summary and conclusion 313<br />
We are thus concluding this brief survey of the former Soviet Central<br />
Asia’s past and present with a mixture of apprehension, hope, and an<br />
admission of the complexity and unpredictability of things to come.For<br />
the first time since colonial conquest in the nineteenth century, Central<br />
Asians are masters of their own house.Russians may be welcome and<br />
even encouraged to continue living in the independent republics, but no<br />
longer as a privileged minority.The Central Asian republics have many<br />
resources: agriculture, mineral deposits, a pleasant climate, historical<br />
monuments, natural beauty, position at the crossroads of the world, an<br />
able and plentiful administration and workforce.All these assets may<br />
turn this region into one of the world’s choice places to live and do business<br />
with, and into one of the prime sites of archeology and tourism.<br />
This will happen, however, only if its leadership and citizens mature into<br />
a civil society that is mindful of its common interests, respectful of each<br />
other’s rights, and aware of the need to preserve the environment not<br />
only through intelligent use and protection but also by admitting that<br />
unchecked population growth may ultimately exhaust and destroy it.If<br />
the oases of Uzbekistan gradually phase out some of the cotton production<br />
and return to growing a variety of fruits, melons and cereals less<br />
voracious of water, they may once again become the earthly paradise<br />
praised in the tenth century by the Arab traveler Ibn Hawqal.If the<br />
Uzbek hotel and other tourist industry infrastructure rises above the<br />
notorious Soviet standards to those of the developed world, international<br />
tourism will surely make Samarkand, Bukhara, and many other<br />
places prime targets of travel, and businessmen and technicians from<br />
abroad will enjoy their visits and assignments there.President Akaev has<br />
repeatedly stated his goal to turn Kyrgyzstan into a Central Asian<br />
Switzerland.It is a praiseworthy and realizable goal, for his country may<br />
even surpass Switzerland in natural beauty and historical interest.<br />
Again, however, the Kyrgyz need to learn much from the Swiss<br />
before they can compete with them.Akaev’s Turkmen colleague<br />
Turkmenbashy (Saparmurad Niyazov) came out with an analogous<br />
ambition: to turn Turkmenistan into a Central Asian Kuwait, thanks to<br />
its fabulous deposits of natural gas and oil.Aside from the forgivable<br />
exaggeration, the ambition, before becoming a reality, will need a considerable<br />
dose of business acumen, international negotiations, and new<br />
pipelines to get these riches to the world market.Similar reservations can<br />
be made about Kazakhstan.At best, it will take a few years before<br />
Central Asian societies can begin to feel the benefits from these many<br />
assets, and things may keep getting worse before they get better.
314 A history of Inner Asia<br />
Sinkiang, as in the past, so too at present displays striking analogies as<br />
well as marked differences when compared with the Muslim sister states<br />
to the west, and its future is both more and less predictable.The nationalist<br />
ferment that has boiled up across the border could be expected to<br />
well up in Sinkiang, and it did.Demands for more self-rule, street demonstrations<br />
and clashes between Uighur nationalists and organs of law<br />
and order in Urumchi and elsewhere have lately been reported.They<br />
have caused increasingly serious casualties and repression by the authorities.The<br />
parallel between Urumchi and Almaty of 1986 is striking, but<br />
so is the difference.The Kazakhs then stood at the threshold of glasnost<br />
and perestroika, which gave the contest a completely new slant and ultimately<br />
granted victory to the nationalists.No such thing seems to be<br />
occurring in Sinkiang.President Jiang Zemin is no Gorbachev, and no<br />
such counterpart is likely to succeed him anytime soon.The state’s iron<br />
discipline apparatus remains intact and ready to act.On the other hand,<br />
if the Uighurs (and other minorities, including the Kazakhs) feel they<br />
have missed the millennium that has dawned over the Kazakhs and their<br />
other kinsmen across the border, they can seek solace by participating in<br />
China’s economic miracle and expressing sympathy for their brethren<br />
across the border who are struggling to survive economic hardships.<br />
While they have been deprived of glasnost, they did not have to wait for<br />
a perestroika to embark on the road to prosperity, for China has devised<br />
her own methods to develop an efficient economy that has so far eluded<br />
Russia and her former dependencies.Moreover, Beijing’s iron rule has<br />
not tried to curb the Uighurs’ identity on the cultural level.The<br />
demands for more self-rule need not necessarily be the voice of the<br />
majority, which may opt for continuing political and economic integration<br />
in China while cherishing their cultural autonomy.This at least<br />
seems to be the implicit advice proffered by the Uighurs’ Turkic kinsmen<br />
across the border.Kazakh and Kyrgyz governments have repeatedly<br />
expressed their recognition of the integrity of China’s borders and<br />
Beijing’s authority in Sinkiang.The agitation of Uighur nationalists<br />
in Almaty, Bishkek or elsewhere receives little support from the host<br />
countries.<br />
Mongolia is enjoying her recently won freedom from a monolithic<br />
ideology, and pursuing the arduous ascent toward a pluralistic political<br />
system and a capitalist economy.As we have remarked earlier, there were<br />
almost no ethnic minorities in the country; this unusually monoethnic<br />
situation has now been brought close to 100 percent, because most of<br />
the Kazakhs who lived in the westernmost aimag have emigrated across
Summary and conclusion 315<br />
the border to Kazakhstan.Meanwhile the Mongols across the border in<br />
China’s Mongol Autonomous Region present a certain analogy to the<br />
Uighurs of Sinkiang, and here too Mongolia is as eager as Kazakhstan<br />
to maintain good relations with Beijing.<br />
The destinies of the five Central Asian republics, Sinkiang, and<br />
Mongolia have throughout the past been intertwined, or run parallel<br />
courses, or collided, and as a result they have gathered enough common<br />
heritage to be viewed as a unique community.Their position in the heart<br />
of the Eurasian continent adds a special dimension to this uniqueness.<br />
In the past, it made them the crossroads or recipients of international<br />
trade, cultures, and religions.At present it makes them a landlocked area<br />
depending on their neighbors to export some of their possibly fabulous<br />
riches in return for no less promising material rewards.Some of these<br />
neighbors are world powers, some are countries beset by complex internal<br />
and international problems.This situation may further draw the<br />
Inner Asian states together or generate similar pragmatic policies.It<br />
makes economic and cultural cooperation between them desirable and<br />
feasible.It also makes realistic relations with the two giant neighbors,<br />
Russia and China, mandatory.The particular case of Sinkiang and<br />
Inner Mongolia only underscores this fact; here, China has become a<br />
special but most probably permanent member of the Inner Asian community.As<br />
for Russia, this former member has become a no less permanent<br />
partner.In Moscow they now like to call Kazakhstan and Central<br />
Asia their “near abroad,” implying a relationship not unlike that of the<br />
United States with Mexico and Central America.The issues display<br />
remarkable analogies: security, economy, even the problem of narcotics<br />
flow from south to north.<br />
There of course remains one unanwered question: the future role of<br />
Islam in Central Asia.As we have pointed out, the educated society there<br />
seems to be basically secular; some members of the intelligentsia even<br />
hold the conservative features of this religion responsible for their<br />
society’s falling behind Russia and subsequent colonial status.As the<br />
economic and social conditions improve, more balanced views are likely<br />
to prevail and Islam will play a role similar to that of Christianity in the<br />
West – a spiritual heritage to be cherished by all those who feel inclined<br />
to do so, but which does not combat the accepted axiom of modern<br />
democracy: separation of church and state.
Appendix 1<br />
dynastic tables<br />
This section is based chiefly on C.E.Bosworth, The New Islamic Dynasties,<br />
Edinburgh and New York 1996.<br />
Samanids (Khurasan and Transoxania, 819–1005; Bukhara the<br />
capital; Bosworth, pp.170–71)<br />
(a) Saman Khuda<br />
(b) Asad<br />
(c) Asad’s sons Nuh, Ahmad (Ahmad I), Yahya, Ilyas<br />
[ 1.Ahmad I (819–64)1st generation<br />
[ 2.Nasr I (864–92), Ahmad I’s son2nd generation<br />
[ 3.Ismail I (892–907), Nasr I’s brother<br />
[ 4.Ahmad II (907–14), Ismail I’s son3rd generation<br />
[ 5.Nasr II (914–43), his cousin<br />
[ 6.Nuh I (943–54), his son4th generation<br />
[ 7.Abd al-Malik I (954–61), his son5th generation<br />
[ 8.Mansur I (961–76), Abd al-Malik I’s brother<br />
[ 9.Nuh II (976–97), Mansur I’s son6th generation<br />
[10.Mansur II (997–99), his son7th generation<br />
[11.Abd al-Malik II, 999–1000, his brother]<br />
[12.Isma’il II, 1000–1005]<br />
Qarakhanids (Semireche, Kashgaria, Fergana, Transoxania, tenth<br />
century – 1211; capitals Balasaghun, Kashgar, Uzgend, Samarkand;<br />
Bosworth, pp.181–4)<br />
(a) The beginnings:<br />
x.Satuq Bughra Khan Abd al-Karim; the first major Turkic convert to<br />
Islam<br />
316
Appendix 1 317<br />
x.sons Baytas Musa and Sulayman<br />
1.Ali (d.998), Baytas Musa’s son3rd generation<br />
2.Ahmad I Arslan Qara Khan (998–1015), his son4th generation<br />
3.Mansur Arslan Khan (1015–24), his brother<br />
4.Ahmad II Toghan Khan (1024–26), Sulayman’s grandson and their<br />
second cousin4th generation<br />
5.Yusuf I Qadir Khan (1026–32), Ahmad II’s brother<br />
A split into an eastern and western branch<br />
(b) Eastern branch (Balasaghun and Kashgar):<br />
1.Sulayman (1032–56), Yusuf I’s son5th generation<br />
2.Muhammad I (1056–57), Sulayman’s brother<br />
3.Ibrahim I (1057–59), Muhammad I’s son6th generation<br />
4.Mahmud (1059–74), Ibrahim’s uncle5th generation<br />
5.Umar (1074–75), Ibrahim’s cousin6th generation<br />
6.Hasan (or Harun) (1075–1103), Umar’s cousin<br />
7.Ahmad (or Harun) (1103–28), Hasan’s son7th generation<br />
8.Ibrahim II (1128–58), his son8th generation<br />
9.Muhammad II (1158–?), his son9th generation<br />
10.Yusuf II (?–1211?), his son10th generation<br />
11.Muhammad III (d.1211), his son11th generation<br />
Occupation of Semireche and Ferghana by the Nayman Küchlüg<br />
(c) Western branch (Samarkand):<br />
1.Muhammad Ayn al-Dawla (1041–52), the son of Ahmad I the son<br />
of Ali b.Musa5th generation<br />
2.Ibrahim I Böritigin Tamghach Khan (1052–68), his brother<br />
3.Nasr I (1068–80), Ibrahim I’s son6th generation<br />
4.Khidr (1080–81), Nasr I’s brother<br />
5.Ahmad I (1081?–89), his son7th generation<br />
6.Yaqub (1089–95), of the eastern branch, brother of its no.6 (Hasan)<br />
6th generation<br />
7.Masud I (1095–97), Ahmad I’s cousin7th generation<br />
8.Sulayman (1097), his cousin<br />
9.Mahmud I (1097–99), their uncle6th generation<br />
10.Jibrail (1099–1102), of the eastern branch, the son of its no.5<br />
(Umar)7th generation<br />
11.Muhammad II (1102–29), Sulayman’s son8th generation<br />
11b.Nasr II (1129), Muhammad II’s son9th generation<br />
12.Ahmad II (1129–30), his brother
318 Appendix 1<br />
13.Hasan (1130–32), of the eastern branch8th generation<br />
14.Ibrahim II (1132), Muhammad II’s brother8th generation<br />
15.Mahmud II (1132–41), Ahmad II’s brother9th generation<br />
16.Ibrahim III (1141–56), his brother<br />
17.Ali (1156–61), of the eastern branch, the son of no.13 (Hasan)9th<br />
generation<br />
18.Masud II (1161–78), his brother<br />
19.Ibrahim IV (1178–1204), his nephew10th generation<br />
20.Uthman (1204–12), his son11th generation<br />
Occupation of Transoxania by the Khwarazmshah Muhammad<br />
Ghaznavids (Khurasan, Afghanistan, Hindustan, 977–1186;<br />
Bosworth, pp.296–9)<br />
x.Sebüktigin (977–97)<br />
1.Ismail (997–98), his son<br />
2.Mahmud (998–1030), Ismail’s brother<br />
3.Muhammad (1030–31 and 1041), Mahmud’s son3rd generation<br />
4.Masud I (1031–41), his brother<br />
5.Mawdud (1041–50), his son4th generation<br />
6.Masud II (1050), his son5th generation<br />
7.Ali (1050), his uncle4th generation<br />
8.Abd al-Rashid (1050–53), his uncle3rd generation<br />
9.Farrukhzad (1053–59), Masud’s son4th generation<br />
10.Ibrahim (1059–99), his brother<br />
11.Masud III (1099–1115), his son5th generation<br />
12.Shirzad (1115), his son6th generation<br />
13.Arslan Shah (1115–18), his brother<br />
14.Bahram Shah (1118–52), their brother<br />
15.Khusraw Shah (1152–60), his son7th generation<br />
16.Khusraw Malik (1160–86), his son8th generation<br />
Ghurid (Afghan) conquest<br />
Great Seljuks (Iran and Irak, 1038–1194; Bosworth pp.185–8)<br />
x.Seljuk<br />
x.sons Arslan Israil, Mikail, Musa Yabghu, Yunus<br />
1.Tughril I (1038–63), Mikail’s son<br />
2.Alp Arslan (1063–72), his son2nd generation<br />
3.Malik Shah I (1072–93), his son3rd generation
4.Mahmud I (1093–94), his son4th generation<br />
5.Barkiyaruq (1094–1105), his brother<br />
6.Malik Shah II (1105), his son5th generation<br />
7.Muhammad I (1105–18), his uncle4th generation<br />
8.Sanjar (1118–57), his brother<br />
Takeover by the Khwarazmshahs<br />
Khwarazmshahs (Khwarazm, later much of Central Asia and Iran;<br />
several dynasties, the earliest documented date being 898; the last<br />
Khwarazmshah perished in 1231; Bosworth, pp.178–80)<br />
(a) Semi-legendary Afrighids of Kath, possibly from the fourth century<br />
on; the first Shah with an Islamic name is the seventeenth, Abdallah b.<br />
T.r.k.s.batha, early ninth century; his successors were:<br />
Mansur ibn Abdallah<br />
Iraq ibn Mansur, reigning in 898<br />
Muhammad ibn Iraq, reigning in 921<br />
Abdallah ibn Ashkam, reigning c.944<br />
Ahmad ibn Muhammad, reigning in 967<br />
Muhammad ibn Ahmad, died in 995<br />
Mamunid conquest<br />
(b) The Mamunids of Urgench, 995–1017<br />
1.Mamun I ibn Muhammad, 995–97<br />
2.Ali ibn Mamun, 997–1009<br />
3.Mamun II ibn Mamun I, 1009–17<br />
Ghaznavid conquest<br />
Appendix 1 319<br />
(c) Ghaznavid governors with the title of Khwarazmshahs, 1017–41<br />
1.Altuntash Hajib, Ghaznavid commander, 1017–32<br />
2.Harun ibn Altuntash, similar function, later independent and assuming<br />
the title Khwarazmshah, 1032–34<br />
3.Ismail ibn Khandan ibn Altuntash, 1034–41<br />
Conquest of Khwarazm by the Oghuz Yabghu, Shah Malik ibn Ali of<br />
Jand, probably receiving the title Khwarazmshah from Masud of<br />
Ghazna.
320 Appendix 1<br />
(d) Anushtiginids, originally governors for the Seljuks with the title of<br />
Khwarazmshahs, eventually independent rulers in Khwarazm,<br />
Transoxania, and Iran (1077–1231)<br />
1.Anushtigin Gharchai, 1077–97<br />
2.Arslan Tigin Muhammad ibn Anushtigin, 1097–1127<br />
3.Qizil Arslan Atsiz ibn Muhammad, 1127–56<br />
4.Il Arslan ibn Atsiz, 1156–72<br />
5.Tekish ibn Il Arslan, 1172–1200<br />
6.Muhammad ibn Tekish, Ala al-Din, 1200–20<br />
7.Mengübirti ibn Muhammad, Jalal al-Din, 1220–31<br />
Mongol conquest<br />
Qarakhitay (Semireche, Sinkiang, Transoxania, 1141–1211; not<br />
included in Bosworth’s book because not an Islamic dynasty, but see his<br />
“Kara Khitay,” The Encyclopaedia of Islam, vol.4, pp.580–3)<br />
1.Yeh-lu Ta-shih (1124–43)<br />
2.Kan-tien (1144–50)<br />
3.I-lieh (1151–61)<br />
4.Chieng-tien (1164–77)<br />
5.Chih-lu-lu (1177–1211)<br />
Destruction by the Nayman Küchlüg<br />
Genghisids<br />
(a) Qaghans or Great Khans, 1206–94; from 1235 official residence<br />
Qaraqorum, later (in Qubilay’s time) Ta-tu (the future Beijing);<br />
Bosworth pp.246–7<br />
1.Genghis Khan (1206–27); sons Juchi, Chaghatay, Ögedey, and Toluy<br />
2.Ögedey (1229–41)2nd generation<br />
x.Töregene (Ögedey’s widow; regent, 1241–46)<br />
3.Güyük (1246–48), Ögedey’s son3rd generation<br />
x.Oghul Qaymish (Güyük’s widow; regent, 1248–51)<br />
4.Möngke (1251–59), Toluy’s son and Güyük’s cousin3rd generation<br />
5.Qubilay (1260–94), Möngke’s brother<br />
(b) Yüan (China, 1260–1368); main residence Khanbaliq (Beijing); not<br />
included in Bosworth; see D.Morgan, The Mongols, tables on pp.222–3.
Appendix 1 321<br />
1.Qubilay (1260–94), Toluy’s son1st Yüan generation<br />
2.Temür Oljeytü (1294–1307), his grandson3rd generation<br />
3.Hai-shan (1307–11), Temür Oljetü’s nephew4th generation<br />
4.Ayurbarwada (1311–20), Hai-shan’s brother4th generation<br />
5.Shidebala (1320–23), Ayurbarwada’s son5th generation<br />
6.Yesün Temür (1323–28), Ayurbarwada’s cousin5th generation<br />
............<br />
11.Toghon Temür, a great-grandson of Hai-shan (1333–68; until 1370<br />
in Mongolia)7th generation<br />
Replaced by the native Chinese Ming dynasty (1368–1644)<br />
(c) Chaghatayids (1227–1370 in Transoxania; until 1680 in Sinkiang;<br />
Bosworth, pp.248–9)<br />
x.Genghis Khan<br />
1.Chaghatay (1227–41)<br />
2.Qara Hülegü (1241–47 and again 1252), Chaghatay’s grandson<br />
3rd Chaghatay generation<br />
3.Yesü Möngke (1247–52), Chaghatay’s son2nd generation<br />
x.Orqina Khatun, Qara Hülegü’s widow (regent; 1252–61)<br />
4.Alughu (1261–66), Chaghatay’s grandson and Qara Hülegü’s cousin<br />
3rd generation<br />
5.Mubarak Shah (1266), Qara Hülegü’s son4th generation<br />
6.Baraq (1266–71), his cousin<br />
7.Negübey (1271–72), Chaghatay’s grandson and Alughu’s cousin<br />
3rd generation<br />
8.Tuqa Temür (1272–91), Chaghatay’s great-great-grandson5th<br />
generation<br />
9.Duva (1291–1306), Tuqa Temür’s cousin<br />
10.Könchek (1306–1308), his son6th generation<br />
11.Taliqu (1308–1309), Duva’s cousin once removed5th generation<br />
12.Kebek (1309, 1318–26), Könchek’s brother6th generation<br />
13.Esen Buqa (1309–18), his brother<br />
14.Eljigidey (1318), his brother<br />
15.Duva Temür (1326), his brother<br />
16.Tarmashirin (1326), his brother<br />
17.Jangshi (1334), their nephew7th generation<br />
18.Buzan (1334–38), his cousin<br />
19.Yesün Temür (1338–42), Jangshi’s brother<br />
20.Muhammad (1342–43), Könchek’s grandson8th generation
322 Appendix 1<br />
21.Qazan (1343–46), Tuqa Timur’s (no.8)’s great-grandson8th generation<br />
Confused situation, with puppet khans in Transoxania until 1357 and<br />
again later under Timur (Tamerlane; see that dynasty), but challenged<br />
by Tughluq Timur (1347–63), installed in Moghulistan and Altishahr.<br />
Tughluq Timur was a son of Imil Khwaja, the son of Duva (no.9), thus<br />
7th generation Genghisid.<br />
Chaghatayid subsequent rule continued to the east of Transoxania, and<br />
was usually broken up into two or more concurrent reigns, covering two<br />
or three areas: Altishahr, Moghulistan, and Uighuristan.The following<br />
list does not claim to be complete or definitive, but only an attempt to<br />
bring out the more important names and dates:<br />
Ilyas Khwaja, 1363–90; a son of Tughluq Timur<br />
Khidr Khwaja, 1390–99; another son of Tughluq Timur<br />
Sham’-i Jahan, 1399–1408, his son<br />
Muhammad Khan, 1408–16, the latter’s brother<br />
Naqsh-i Jahan, 1416–18, a son of Sham’-i Jahan<br />
Uways Khan, 1418–21 and 1425–28, a son of Shir Ali b.Khidr<br />
Shir Muhammad, 1421–25, a son of Shah Jahan b.Khidr<br />
Esen Buqa, 1428–62, a son of Uways Khan<br />
Yunus Khan, 1462–81, another son of Uways Khan<br />
Mahmud Khan, 1486–1508, a son of Yunus Khan<br />
Mansur Khan, 1502–43, a grandson of Yunus; ruler of Moghulistan<br />
Said (or Sayyid) Khan, 1514–32, a brother of Mansur; ruler of Altishahr<br />
Abd al-Rashid, 1543–70, a son of Sayyid Khan<br />
(d) Golden Horde and White Horde (Bosworth pp.252–4)<br />
Golden Horde (southern Russia, Ukraine, Kazakhstan, northern<br />
Khwarazm; principal headquarters Saray (eastern part of the Volga<br />
delta) and New Saray (near the eastern bank of the Volga not far from<br />
modern Volgograd)<br />
x.Genghis Khan, d.1227<br />
x.Juchi, Genghis Khan’s eldest son, died in 1227 three months before<br />
his father<br />
1.Batu (1227–55), Juchi’s second son =1st generation
Appendix 1 323<br />
2.Sartaq (1255–57), Batu’s son2nd generation<br />
3.Ulaghchi (1257), Sartaq’s son3rd generation<br />
4.Berke (1257–67), Batu’s brother1st generation<br />
5.Möngke Temür (1267–80), Batu’s grandson3rd generation<br />
6.Töde Möngke (1280–87), his brother3rd generation<br />
7.Töle Buqa (1287–90), their nephew4th generation<br />
8.Toqta (1290–1312), Möngke Temür’s son4th generation<br />
9.Özbeg (1312–41), Möngke Temür’s grandson5th generation<br />
10.Tini Beg (1341–42), Özbeg’s son6th generation<br />
11.Janibeg (1342–57), his brother<br />
12.Berdi Beg (1357–59), Janibeg’s son7th generation<br />
Confused situation marked by internecine struggle, usurpations, and<br />
the first Russian victory in 1380; nominally, the Horde lasted until<br />
1502<br />
White Horde (eastern part of the Dasht-i Kipchak: Eastern<br />
Kazakhstan and western Siberia; headquarters shifting, often Sighnaq<br />
on the northern bank of the middle course of the Syr Darya)<br />
1.Orda, Juchi’s eldest son and thus Batu’s elder brother<br />
...8.Urus (1361–75)<br />
...11.Tokhtamish (1376–95), extended his rule over the Golden Horde<br />
but eliminated by Timur (Tamerlane)<br />
...x.Shaykh Ahmad (1481–1502)<br />
(e) Ilkhanids (Iran and Iraq, 1256–1335; Tabriz, Maragha and<br />
Sultaniya the main residences; Bosworth, pp.250–1)<br />
x.Toluy, Genghis Khan’s youngest son<br />
1.Hülegü (1256–65), Toluy’s third son<br />
2.Abaqa (1265–82), Hülegü’s son2nd generation<br />
3.Tegüder Ahmad (1282–84), Abaqa’s brother<br />
4.Arghun (1284–91), Abaqa’s son,3rd generation<br />
5.Geykhatu (1291–95), Arghun’s brother<br />
6.Baydu (1295), their uncle2nd generation<br />
7.Ghazan (1295–1304), Arghun’s son4th generation<br />
8.Oljeytü (1304–17), Ghazan’s brother<br />
9.Abu Said (1317–35), Oljeytü’s son5th generation<br />
x.struggle among various pretenders; the dynasty’s replacement, in<br />
1353, by several local ruling houses.
324 Appendix 1<br />
Timurid (non-Genghisid) interlude: Timurids (Samarkand, Herat;<br />
1370–1507; Bosworth, pp.270–2)<br />
1.Timur (Temrlane; 1370–1405); sons Umar Shaykh, Jahangir,<br />
Miranshah, Shahrukh<br />
2.Khalil Sultan (1405–1409), Timur’s grandson through Miranshah<br />
3rd generation<br />
3.Shah Rukh (1405–47)2nd generation<br />
4.Ulugh Beg (1447–49), his son3rd generation<br />
5.Abd al-Latif (1449–50), his son4th generation<br />
6.Abdallah (1450–51), Shahrukh’s grandson4th generation<br />
7.Abu Said (1451–69), Timur’s great-grandson through Miranshah –<br />
Sultan Muhammad4th generation<br />
8.Ahmad (1469–94), his sonfifth generation<br />
9.Mahmud (1494–1500), Ahmad’s brother; succumbed to the<br />
Shaybanids.<br />
The overlapping years of nos.2 and 3, the rule of Khalil Sultan and<br />
Shah Rukh, stem both from the struggle for succession that followed<br />
Timur’s death, and from the geopolitical dichotomy caused by the rise<br />
of Khurasan (capital Herat) seizing primacy from Transoxania (capital<br />
Samarkand).Shah Rukh preferred to stay in the Khurasanian city, and<br />
let his son Ulugh Beg rule Transoxania as a viceroy.Their immediate<br />
successors endeavored and mostly succeeded in unifying the empire and<br />
ruled from either city, but the split reappeared definitively after the death<br />
of the seventh ruler, Abu Said, in 1469.Khurasan and the rest of the<br />
empire in Iran was from then on ruled by the three following monarchs:<br />
1.Yadigar Muhammad (1469–70), a great-grandson of Shahrukh5th<br />
generation<br />
2.Husayn Bayqara (1470–1506), a great-great-grandson of Timur<br />
through Umar Shaykh – Bayqara – Mansur6th generation<br />
3.Badi’ al-Zaman (1506–1507), his son7th generation; suppressed by<br />
the Shaybanids<br />
Timurid rule resumed, however, in India in 1526 and lasted until 1858,<br />
although the different area and circumstances have transformed its<br />
image, in Western perception, as that of the Great Mughals.Its founder,<br />
Zahir al-Din Babur, was a 6th generation Timurid through Miranshah
– Sultan Muhammad – Abu Said – Umar Shaykh.Agra was the<br />
dynasty’s earliest capital, and the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries<br />
were its apogee.See Bosworth, pp.331–4.<br />
1.Babur (1526–30)<br />
2.Humayun (1530–56), his son<br />
3.Akbar (1556–1605), his son<br />
4.Jahangir (1605–27), his son<br />
5.Dawar Bakhsh (1627–28), his grandson<br />
6.Shahjahan (1628–57), his brother<br />
7.Dara Shikuh (1657–58), his son<br />
8.Awrangzib (1658–1707), his brother<br />
Appendix 1 325<br />
Genghisid restoration:<br />
(f) Abulkhayrid Shaybanids (chiefly Bukhara, Samarkand,<br />
Tashkent, Balkh; 1500–1599; Bosworth, pp.288–9)<br />
x.Abu l-Khayr (1428–68), a descendant of Shiban, 5th son of Genghis<br />
Khan’s eldest son Juchi<br />
x.Shah Budaq, his son<br />
1.Muhammad Shaybani (1500–10), Shah Budaq’s son3rd generation,<br />
the founder of Shaybanid rule in Transoxania; two years of confusion<br />
and invasion by Safavid troops and Babur followed Muhammad’s<br />
defeat and death<br />
2.Köchkunju (1512–30), Muhammad’s uncle2nd generation<br />
3.Abu Said (1530–33), Muhammad’s cousin3rd generation<br />
4.Ubaydallah (1533–39), Muhammad’s nephew4th generation;<br />
pivotal role since 1512<br />
5.Abdallah I (1539–40), Abu Said’s brother3rd generation<br />
6.Abd al-Latif (1540–52), their brother3rd generation<br />
7.Nawruz Ahmad “Baraq” (1552–56), their cousin3rd generation<br />
8.Pir Muhammad I (1556–61), Ubaydallah’s cousin4th generation<br />
9.Iskander (1561–83), his brother4th generation<br />
10.Abdallah II (1583–98), Iskander’s son5th generation<br />
11.Abd al-Mumin (1598), Abdallah II’s son6th generation; succeeded<br />
by the Janids or Tuqay-Timurids<br />
(g) Janids or Ashtarkhanids (or Toqay-T imurids: descendants of<br />
Toqay-Timur, Juchi’s 13th son); Bukhara, 1599–1785; Bosworth, pp.<br />
290–1)
326 Appendix 1<br />
x.Yar Muhammad<br />
1.Jani Muhammad (1599–1603)<br />
2.Baqi Muhammad (1603–1606), his son2nd generation<br />
3.Vali Muhammad (1606–12), Baqi Muhammad’s brother<br />
4.Imam Quli (1612–42), their nephew3rd generation<br />
5.Nazr Muhammad (1642–45), his brother<br />
6.Abd al-Aziz (1645–81), Nazr Muhammad’s son4th generation<br />
7.Subhan Quli (1681–1702), Abd al-Aziz’s brother<br />
8.Ubaydallah I (1702–11), Subhan Quli’s son5th generation<br />
9.Abu l-Fayz (1711–47), Ubaydallah’s brother<br />
10.Abd al-Mu’min (1747), his son6th generation<br />
11.Ubaydallah II (1747–53), Abd al-Mu’min’s brother<br />
x.[Muhammad Rahim the Manghit, in the absence of Janid incumbency]<br />
12.Abu l-Ghazi (1758–85), from a lateral branch<br />
End of Genghisid rule in Transoxania<br />
Manghits (emirs of Bukhara, 1785–1920; Bosworth, p.292)<br />
1.Mir Masum Shah Murad (1785–1800)<br />
2.Haydar Töre (1800–26), his son2nd generation<br />
3.Husayn (1826), his son3rd generation<br />
4.Umar (1826–27), his brother<br />
5.Nasr Allah (1827–60), his brother<br />
6.Muzaffar al-Din (1860–86), his son4th generation<br />
7.Abd al-Ahad (1886–1910), his son5th generation<br />
8.Alim (1910–20), his son6th generation<br />
Bolshevik conquest and establishment of the People’s Republic of<br />
Bukhara<br />
Ming (Khoqand, ca.1710–1876; until 1789 data incomplete and dates<br />
approximate; after 1845 frequent confusion and intermittent reign of<br />
Khudayar Khan; Bosworth, p.295)<br />
1.Shahrukh Biy (1710–21)<br />
2.Muhammad Rahim Biy (1721–40)<br />
3.Abd al-Rahim Biy (1740–60)<br />
4.Narbuta Biy (1769–89)<br />
5.Alim Biy, later assumed the title Alim Khan (1789–1810)<br />
6.Umar Khan (1810–22)<br />
7.Muhammad Ali (Madali) Khan (1822–42)
8.Shir Ali Khan (1842–45)<br />
9.Murad Khan (7 days)<br />
10.Khudayar Khan (1845–75, three times)<br />
x.Nasr al-Din Khan (1875–76)<br />
Appendix 1 327<br />
Khans of Khiva 1515–1919; Bosworth, pp.290–1<br />
(a) Arabshahids or Yadigarid Shaybanids, ca.1515–1804.This<br />
was a Genghisid dynasty, tracing its lineage, like the neighboring<br />
Shaybanids, to Juchi through Shiban.Ethnolinguistically, they were thus<br />
Kipchak-Turkic speaking Turco-Mongols.<br />
1.Ilbars I (1515–25)<br />
2.Sultan Haji (1525–?)<br />
3.Hasan Quli<br />
4.Sufyan<br />
5.Bujugha<br />
6.Avnik<br />
7.Qal (1539–46)<br />
8.Aqatay, (1546)<br />
9.Dust Muhammad (1546–58)<br />
10.Haji Muhammad I (1558–1602)<br />
11.Arab Muhammad I (1602–23)<br />
12.Isfandiyar (1623–43)<br />
13.Abu l-Ghazi I Bahadur (1643–63)<br />
14.Anusha (1663–87)<br />
15.Muhammad Awrang (1687–88)<br />
16.Ishaq Agha Shah Niyaz (1688–1702)<br />
17.Arab Muhammad II (1702–?)<br />
18.Haji Muhammad II<br />
19.Yadigar (1714)<br />
20.Awrang (1714–15)<br />
21.Shir Ghazi (1715–28)<br />
22.Ilbars II (1728–40)<br />
Occupation by Nadir Shah Afshar, shah of Iran, execution of Ilbars II,<br />
and brief rule of Nadir Shah’s governor Tekir or Tahir Khan<br />
23.Abu l-Ghazi II Muhammad (1742–45)<br />
24.Ghaib (1745–70)
328 Appendix 1<br />
25.Abu l-Ghazi III (1770)<br />
Confused situation, with leaders of the Qungrat tribe assuming the role<br />
of inaq or majordomo similar to that of the ataliq played in Bukhara by<br />
Manghit chieftains; Muhammad Amin (1770–90) and his son Avaz<br />
(1790–1803) thus ruled in the name of puppet khans, but the latter’s son<br />
Iltüzer put an end to this practice and proclaimed himself khan.<br />
(b) Qungrats or Inaqids, 1803–1919<br />
1.Iltüzer, son of the inak Avaz (1803–1806)<br />
2.Muhammad Rahim (1806–25)<br />
3.Allah Quli (1825–42)<br />
4.Rahim Quli (1842–45)<br />
5.Muhammad Amin (1845–55)<br />
6.Abdallah (1855)<br />
7.Qutlugh Murad (1855–56)<br />
8.Sayyid Muhammad (1856–65)<br />
9.Sayyid Muhammad Rahim (1865–1919); Russian conquest in 1873,<br />
truncation of the khanate’s territory (the entire area on the right – northern<br />
– bank of the Amu Darya was detached from Khiva and added to<br />
the Syr Darya oblast of the Governorate-General of Turkestan), continuation<br />
of his rule as the Tsar’s vassal.<br />
10.Abd al-Sayyid (1919)<br />
Bolshevik revolution, establishment of the Khorezm People’s Republic<br />
in 1920<br />
Yalavachids (Central Asia and China, thirteenth–fourteenth centuries;<br />
see T.T.Allsen, “Mahmud Yalavach, Mas’ud Beg, Ali Beg, Safaliq,<br />
Bujir,” In the Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol Yuan<br />
Period, ed.I.de Rachewiltz, Wiesbaden 1993, pp.122–36)<br />
In 1218, Genghis Khan sent three Muslim merchants to the<br />
Khwarazmshah Muhammad with proposals of trade and friendship.<br />
One of the three envoys was Mahmud Yalavach, a Khwarazmian who<br />
appears to have entered Mongol service sometime between 1211 and<br />
1218.It was the beginning of a glorious career in the service of<br />
the Great Khans that ended only with Mahmud’s natural death at<br />
Beijing in 1254; what is more, his son Masud and three of his grandsons<br />
also held high posts in the Mongol empire, a true dynasty of admin-
Appendix 1 329<br />
istrators whose historical importance may have surpassed that of most<br />
khans.<br />
1.Mahmud Yalavach, fl.1218–54<br />
2.Masud Beg, his son, fl.1239–89<br />
3.Abu Bakr, Masud Beg’s son, fl.1289–98<br />
4.Satilmish, Abu Bakr’s brother, fl.1298–1302.Suyunich, another<br />
brother, fl.1302–?<br />
The Khwajas of Kashgaria (Isenbike Togan, table 29 and pp.<br />
474–76 in Encyclopaedia Iranica, vol.5; A.G.Schwarz, “The Khwajas of<br />
Eastern Turkestan,” Central Asiatic Journal, 20 (1976): 266–96)<br />
The term khwaja (also spelled khvaja, and its more popular form khoja) has<br />
a complex history, multifaceted connotation, and uncertain etymology.<br />
In the case under discussion here, it was an honorific title assumed by<br />
two branches of a family of Naqshbandi dervishes originally from<br />
Transoxania but who from the middle of the sixteenth to the middle of<br />
the eighteenth centuries wielded considerable spiritual, economic and<br />
political power in Kashgaria or Sinkiang’s Altishahr portion<br />
(“Hexapolis” or region of six cities: Kashgar, Yarkand, Khotan, Aksu,<br />
Uch Turfan, and Kucha).<br />
The two branches were descended from the Naqshbandi sufi Ahmad<br />
Kasani, better remembered as Makhdum-i Azam (an honorific title with<br />
Arabic etymology and Persian construction, meaning “The Great<br />
Master” (1462–1543).<br />
(a) the Afaqiya branch (Aqtaghliq or “White Mountain”<br />
Khwajas)<br />
1.Makhdum-i Azam’s son Muhammad Amin called “Ishan-i Kalan”<br />
(an honorific title with Persian and Turki etymology, an approximate<br />
synonym of Makhdum-i Azam; d.1597/8)<br />
2.Muhammad Yusuf (d.ca.1653)<br />
3.Hidayat Allah commonly called Khwaja Afaq or Apaq (d.1694; the<br />
name Afaqi or Afaqiya was coined after this Khwaja)<br />
4.Khan Khwajam Yahya (d.1696)<br />
5.Hasan Bughra Khan (d.1725)<br />
6.Ahmad
330 Appendix 1<br />
7a.Qilich Burhan al-Din called “The Great Khwaja” (d.1759)<br />
7b.Khwaja Jahan Yahya called “The Little Khwaja” (d.1779)<br />
(b) the Ishaqiya branch (Qarataghliq or “Black Mountain”<br />
Khwajas)<br />
1.Makhdum-i Azam’s son Ishaq Vali (d.ca.1605; the name Ishaqi or<br />
Ishaqiya started with him)<br />
2.Khwaja Shadi (d.1655)<br />
3.Ubaydallah called Khwajam Padshah (d.1684)<br />
4.Danyal (d.1736)<br />
5a.Yusuf (d.ca 1755)<br />
5b.Yaqub (d.ca 1755)
Appendix 2<br />
country data<br />
Kazakhstan<br />
Area: 2,717,300 square kilometers (1,049,150 square miles); Kazakhstan<br />
is the second largest republic of the former Soviet Union (and now of<br />
the CIS, Commonwealth of Independent States), after Russia, and also<br />
the largest of the seven units discussed in our book; its size can be visualized<br />
by comparison with Sinkiang (1,646,800 square kilometers),<br />
Mongolia (1,565,000 square kilometers), Turkey (780,000 square kilometers),<br />
Ukraine (603,700 square kilometers), France (551,000 square<br />
kilometers), and Uzbekistan (447,400 square kilometers).The country<br />
extends 1,900 kilometers from west to east and 1,300 kilometers from<br />
north to south.<br />
Population (in 1995, according to the United Nations Food and<br />
Population Agency): 17,100,000; this makes Kazakhstan the fourth most<br />
populous republic of the CIS, after Russia, Ukraine, and Uzbekistan.<br />
Density per square kilometers: 6.2.<br />
Ethnic composition (in 1994): Kazakh 44.3%, Russian 35.8%, Ukrainian<br />
5.1%, German 3.6%, Uzbek 2.2%, Tatar 2.0%, Belarusian 1.1%. These<br />
ratios are rapidly changing, chiefly due to the higher birthrate of the<br />
Kazakh component but also to the emigration of the Europeans.<br />
Official language: Kazakh, a Turkic language of the Kipchak group,<br />
written in the Cyrillic script; and Russian, which enjoys a special status<br />
as the “language of interethnic communication.”<br />
Religion: Islam, of the Sunni denomination.It gradually asserted itself<br />
among the Kazakhs since the late Middle Ages.In the Soviet period,<br />
331
332 Appendix 2<br />
Kazakh Muslims were under the spiritual jurisdiction of the mufti (lit.<br />
jurisconsult, here head of the religious community) of Central Asia and<br />
Kazakhstan whose office was established at Tashkent in 1942; in 1990 a<br />
separate muftiate for Kazakhstan was created.The office of the present<br />
mufti, Haji Ratbek Nysanbay-uly, is in Almaty.Orthodox Christianity is<br />
the titular religion of the chiefly Russian Slavic minority.<br />
Capital: Astana.Until late 1997 – or until June 1998, depending on interpretation<br />
– the capital was Almaty (formerly known as Alma-Ata),<br />
with 1,176,000 inhabitants (1993 estimate), situated excentrically in<br />
the southeastern corner of the country near the Kyrgyz border and the<br />
Kyrgyz capital Bishkek.Like many Central Asian cities, especially the<br />
capitals, Almaty became in the Soviet period a predominantly Slavic,<br />
chiefly Russian city: by 1970, Kazakhs constituted only 12.4% of the<br />
city’s population; since then the trend has changed in their favor (22.5%<br />
in 1989), but the Slavic majority is still overwhelming and underscores<br />
the complexity of the republic’s ethnic identity.On 6 July 1994 the parliament<br />
approved a project to transfer the role of capital to Akmola<br />
(Akmolinsk in Russian; on the other hand, the city is now also referred<br />
to in the media as Astana, which is also the generic Kazakh word for<br />
“capital”), situated farther north near the “Russian belt” of the republic,<br />
by the year 2000.This seems to have been primarily President<br />
Nursultan Nazarbaev’s idea, whose vigorous support advanced the date<br />
of a preliminary inauguration to November 1997 (see “A Glittering new<br />
Kazakh capital, on the face of it,” The New York Times, 9 November<br />
1997), and the official inauguration took place on 10 June 1998.<br />
Currency: the tenge (100 tein1 tenge), which on 15 November 1993<br />
replaced the rouble.<br />
Geopolitical situation: Kazakhstan borders European Russia on the west<br />
and Siberian Russia on the north and northeast; Turkmenistan,<br />
Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan on the south; and China’s Sinkiang Uighur<br />
Autonomous Region on the southeast.The Caspian and Aral Seas also<br />
delimit it on the southwest and south.<br />
The republic’s nineteen provinces (oblys) and provincial capitals (proceeding<br />
from west to east and from north to south; the names are given<br />
in Kazakh, with their former – often Russian – counterparts in parentheses):
Appendix 2 333<br />
Batys Qazaqstan (West Kazakhstan), capital Oral (Uralsk); Atyrau,<br />
capital Atyrau (Gurev); Mangghystau (Mangyshlak), capital Aqtau<br />
(Shevchenko); Aqtöbe, capital Aqtöbe (Aktiubinsk); Qostanay, capital<br />
Qostanay (Kustanai); Torghay (Turgai), capital Arqalyq; Qyzylorda,<br />
capital Qyzylorda (Kzyl-Orda); Soltustyk Qazaqstan (North<br />
Kazakhstan), capital Petropavl (Petropavlovsk); Kökshetau, capital<br />
Kökshetau (Kokchetav); Aqmola, capital Aqmola (Akmolinsk, in the<br />
final years of Soviet rule called Tselinograd; since June 1998 the official<br />
capital of the republic, and seemingly called just that, Astana, “Capital<br />
City”); Qaraghandy, capital Qaraghandy (Karaganda); Zhezqazghan,<br />
capital Zhezqazghan (Dzhezkazgan); Ongtüstik Qazaqstan (South<br />
Kazakhstan), capital Shymkent (Chimkent); Zhambyl, capital Zhambyl<br />
(Dzhambul); Pavlodar, capital Pavlodar; Semey, capital Semey<br />
(Semipalatinsk); Taldyqorghan, capital Taldyqorghan (Taldy-Kurgan);<br />
Shyghys Qazaqstan (East Kazakhstan), capital Öskemen (Ust-<br />
Kamenogorsk).<br />
Kyrgyzstan<br />
Area: 198,500 square kilometers (76,600 square miles).<br />
Population: 4,476,400 (in 1994).Density per square kilometer: 22.6.<br />
Ethnic composition (in 1993): Kyrgyz 56.5%, Russian 18.8%, Uzbek<br />
12.9%, Ukrainian 2.1%, German 1.0%, besides smaller groups.<br />
Official language: Kyrgyz, a Turkic language written in the Cyrillic script,<br />
is the official language; as in the other Central Asian republics, there is<br />
a plan to switch to the Roman script.Russian, however, has remained<br />
the indispensable vehicle of communication in the sectors of economics,<br />
science, technology and health care; moreover, on 15 June 1994<br />
President Akaev decreed that it would be the official language in districts<br />
where Russian speakers form the majority.<br />
Religion: Historically, the Kyrgyz are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafite<br />
school.<br />
Capital: Bishkek (named Frunze between 1926 and 1991), with 627,800<br />
inhabitants in 1991.
334 Appendix 2<br />
Currency: The som; it is the Kyrgyz term for rouble, and the som remains<br />
integrated in the rouble system.1 som100 tyiyns.<br />
Geopolitical situation: Kyrgyzstan borders Kazakhstan on the north and<br />
northwest, Uzbekistan on the west, Tajikistan on the south, and<br />
Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region on the east.The capital, Bishkek,<br />
is located excentrically in the valley of the Chu river near the Kazakh<br />
border.<br />
The republic’s six provinces (oblast) and provincial capitals (proceeding<br />
from west to east and north to south):<br />
Talas, capital Talas; Chüy (Chu; capital Bishkek, also capital of the<br />
republic); Ysyk-Köl (Issyk-Kul), capital Karakol (Przhevalsk); Jalal-<br />
Abad, capital Jalal-Abad; Osh, capital Osh; Naryn, capital Naryn.<br />
Tajikistan<br />
Area: 143,100 squre kilometers (55,251 square miles); it is the smallest of<br />
the five Central Asian republics (after Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan,<br />
Uzbekistan and Kyrgyzstan).<br />
Population (in 1994): 5,751,000.Density per square kilometer: 40.2.<br />
Ethnic composition (according to the 1989 census): Tajik 62.3%, Uzbek<br />
23.5%, Russian 7.6%; the rest consists of smaller groups that include<br />
Tatars, Germans, and Jews.Noteworthy is the large Uzbek minority,<br />
present chiefly in the mixed Tajik-Uzbek area along the Uzbek border<br />
and in the northwestern protrusion around the city of Khujand.<br />
Another special group is the Pamiris, inhabitants of the eastern half of<br />
the republic, the Gorno-Badakhshan Autonomous Region (63,700<br />
square kilometers).They speak an Iranian dialect of their own but are<br />
included among the speakers of Tajik in the census.<br />
Official language: Tajik, an Iranian idiom virtually identical to Persian, the<br />
language of Iran; it is written in the Cyrillic alphabet, although projects<br />
for increased use of the Arabic alphabet or of the Roman script have<br />
been proposed and partly implemented in the case of the former.<br />
Religion: Historically, Tajiks are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafite school;<br />
the Pamiris, however, also differ in this respect by adhering to Shiite
Islam’s Ismailite form, a denomination that recognizes the Agha Khan<br />
as its spiritual head.<br />
Capital: Dushanbe (602,000 inhabitants according in 1990); it was called<br />
Stalinabad between 1929 and 1956.<br />
Currency: the rouble.1 rouble100 kopeks.<br />
Appendix 2 335<br />
Geopolitical situation: Tajikistan’s neighbors are, on the south, Afghanistan;<br />
on the east, China (more exactly, her Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous<br />
Region); on the north, Kyrgyzstan; and on the west, Uzbekistan.The<br />
republic’s fairly rectangular shape is broken on the northwest by an<br />
extension in a northeasterly direction, encompassing the city of<br />
Khujand and protruding into the Ferghana valley.This extension, correctly<br />
expressing the ethnolinguistic distribution of the population<br />
(despite the abovementioned Uzbek minority), has nevertheless created<br />
an intricate gerrymander involving three republics – Tajikistan,<br />
Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan<br />
The republic’s four provinces (viloyat) and one autonomous region (viloyati<br />
avtonomi):<br />
Leninobod (Leninabad), capital Khujand; Dushanbe, capital<br />
Dushanbe; also capital of the republic, called Stalinabad between 1926<br />
and 1961); Qurghonteppa (Kurgan-Tiube), capital Qurghonteppa;<br />
Khatlon (Kuliab), capital Kulob; and Viloyati Avtonomii Badakhshoni<br />
Kuhi (Gorno-Badakhshanskaya Avtonomnaya Oblast, “Mountain-<br />
Badakhshan AR”), capital Khorugh (Khorog).<br />
Turkmenistan<br />
Area: 488,100 square kilometers (188,456 square miles).<br />
Population (in 1995): 4,483,300.Density per square kilometer: 8.7.<br />
Ethnic composition (1993 estimate): Turkmen 73.3%, Russian 9.8%, Uzbek<br />
9%, Kazakh 2.0%.<br />
Official language: Turkmen, a Turkic language of the Oghuz group closely<br />
related to the Turkish of Turkey; it is written in the Cyrillic script, but<br />
there is a plan to switch to the Roman script.
336 Appendix 2<br />
Religion: Historically, the Turkmens are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafite<br />
school.<br />
Capital: Ashgabat (its Turkmen form; Ashkhabad in Russian), 1993 estimate:<br />
517,200 inhabitants.<br />
Currency: until recently part of the rouble system; since 1993 now based<br />
on the manat; one manat100 tenge.<br />
Geopolitical situation: The republic forms an approximate rectangle, with<br />
its axis lying northwest–southeast.On the west it borders the Caspian<br />
sea; on the northwest, Kazakhstan; on the north and northeast,<br />
Uzbekistan; on the southeast, Afghanistan; on the south and southwest,<br />
Iran.<br />
Turkmenistan consits of five provinces (welayat); their names and those<br />
of their capitals, proceeding from west to east and north to south:<br />
Balkan, capital Nebitdag; Dashhowuz, capital Dashhowuz (Tashauz);<br />
Ahal, capital Ashgabat (Ashkhabad, capital of the republic); Lebap,<br />
capital Charjew (Chardzhou); Mary, capital Mary.<br />
Uzbekistan<br />
Area: 447,400 square kilometers (172,740 square miles).<br />
Population (in 1994): 22,098,000.density per square kilometer: 49.4.This<br />
makes Uzbekistan the most populous republic of Central Asia.<br />
Ethnic composition: Uzbek, 79.5%, Russian 8.3%, Tajik 4.7%, Kazakh<br />
4.1%, Tatar 2.4%, and smaller groups which include an ancient Jewish<br />
community (primarily in Bukhara).The Tajik component may be larger<br />
than the official figure indicates, for many citizens in the cities and countryside<br />
of the Zarafshan valley are bilingual and for practical reasons<br />
claim Uzbek identity.<br />
Official language: Uzbek, a Turkic language closely related to the Uighur<br />
of Sinkiang and formerly known as Turki; it is written in the Cyrillic<br />
script.A switch to the Roman script was approved by the Parliament in<br />
1994, to be carried out gradually.Meanwhile Russian has retained its
place as a semi-official language, not unlike English in India and French<br />
in North Africa.<br />
Religion: Historically, most Uzbeks are Sunni Muslims of the Hanafite<br />
school.<br />
Capital: Tashkent (2,094,000 inhabitants according to a 1990 estimate).<br />
Currency: the som.<br />
Appendix 2 337<br />
Geopolitical situation: Uzbekistan lies in the heart of Central Asia, or<br />
Western or (formerly) Russian Turkestan.Moreover, its position is also<br />
central in historical and cultural terms: for the core of Uzbekistan, the<br />
Zerafshan valley with the cities of Samarkand and Bukhara, is the<br />
ancient Sogdia and the center of gravity of Central Asian civilization,<br />
both pre-Islamic and Islamic.Today, Uzbekistan’s neighbors are, on the<br />
north and west, Kazakhstan; on the south, Turkmenistan and<br />
Afghanistan; on the southeast, Tajikistan; and on the northeast,<br />
Kyrgyzstan.Uzbekistan’s capital, Tashkent, is situated excentrically in<br />
the country’s northeastern protrusion near the Kazakh border.<br />
Uzbekistan consists of twelve provinces and one autonomous republic.<br />
The provinces are, proceeding from east to west:<br />
Andijon (Andizhan), capital Andijon; Namangan, capital Namangan;<br />
Farghona (Fergana), capital Farghona; Toshkent (Tashkent), capital<br />
Toshkent, also capital of the republic; Sirdaryo (Syrdarya), capital<br />
Guliston (Gulistan); Zhizzakh (Dzhizak), capital Zhizzakh; Samarqand<br />
(Samarkand), capital Samarqand; Qashqadaryo (Kashkadarya), capital<br />
Qarshi (Karshi); Surkhondaryo (Surkhandarya), capital Termiz<br />
(Termez); Nawoiy (Navoi), capital Navoiy; Bukhoro (Bukhara), capital<br />
Bukhoro; Khorazm (capital Urganch).<br />
Karakalpakistan<br />
Qoraqalpoghiston (Karakalpakistan) Avtonom Respublikasi (as part of<br />
the Republic of Uzbekistan): the only “autonomous republic” in Central<br />
Asia, it has an area of 165,600 square kilometers (37% of Uzbekistan as<br />
a whole) and a population of 1,214,000 (in 1989); the capital is Nukus<br />
(175,000 inhabitants).
338 Appendix 2<br />
Sinkiang<br />
(Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous Region, Xinjiang Weiwuer Zeji Chu)<br />
Area: 1,646,800 square kilometers (635,830 square miles); this makes it<br />
the largest of China’s administrative units, and the second largest from<br />
among the seven principal units discussed in our book.<br />
Population (1990 census): 15,156,883.<br />
Ethnic composition: 7,191,845 Uighur, 5,200,000 Han Chinese, 900,000<br />
Kazakh, 570,000 Hui (Muslim) Chinese, 117,000 Mongol, 113,000<br />
Kyrgyz, besides several smaller groups.<br />
Official languages: Chinese and Uighur, a Turkic language of the Turki<br />
group closely related to Uzbek; in specific minority enclaves, it is Chinese<br />
and the language of the respective group.<br />
Capital: Urumchi, with 1,217,316 inhabitants in 1990, of whom 934,851<br />
were Han Chinese, 161,643 Uighurs, 83,001 Hui (Muslim) Chinese, and<br />
15,462 Kazakhs.<br />
Geopolitical situation and administrative structure: Sinkiang has common<br />
borders with China’s Kansu and Tsinghai provinces, and with Tibet<br />
(Tibet Autonomous Region); proceeding clockwise, its borders run along<br />
India (Kashmir), Pakistan, the tip of Afghanistan’s narrow protrusion<br />
that separates Pakistan from Tajikistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan,<br />
Kazakhstan, Russia’s Siberian border (specifically, along its Gorno-<br />
Altaisk Autonomous Region), and Mongolia.<br />
The present political and administrative structure was inaugurated on<br />
1 October 1955, when Sinkiang became one of the four “autonomous<br />
regions” (ze ji chu) of the People’s Republic of China (Inner Mongolia,<br />
Tibet, and Ningsia are the other three).<br />
The administrative structure of Sinkiang is complex, reflecting its<br />
ethnic and cultural diversity.The area inhabited by the titular nationality,<br />
the Uighurs, is subdivided into six sub-regions (di chu): Kashgar, Aksu,<br />
Chuguchak, Altai, Hami, and Khotan.The territories inhabited by five<br />
other minorities enjoy the status of “autonomous districts” (ze ji chou): the<br />
Ili Kazakh Autonomous District, capital Kulja (Ining); the Chang-chi<br />
Hui (Chinese Muslim) Autonomous District, capital Chang-chi; the<br />
Kizil Su Kyrgyz Autonomous District, center Artux (Atu shih); the
Borotala Mongol Autonomous District, administrative district Boro<br />
(Polo); and the Bayan Gol Mongol Autonomous District, capital Korla<br />
(Ku-erh-le).Four municipalities (shih) have a special status of their own;<br />
one is Urumchi together with a county (xien) of the same name; the other<br />
three are Kashgar, Kulja, and Karamai.<br />
Mongolia<br />
Area: 1,565,000 square kilometers (604,250 square miles).<br />
Population (according to the 1994 UNFPA estimate): 2,400,000.Density<br />
per square kilometer: 1.5.<br />
Ethnic composition: Mongols, 90% of the population; the rest are Turks<br />
(chiefly Kazakhs, most of whom, however, have recently emigrated to<br />
Kazakhstan; some Tuvans).<br />
Official language: Mongolian (based on the Khalkha branch of Eastern<br />
Mongolian), written in the Cyrillic script.<br />
Religion: Lamaistic Buddhism, now revived after seventy years of obscurity<br />
under Communist rule (1921–91); Islam (Kazakhs).<br />
Capital: Ulan Bator (Ulaanbaatar), with 619,000 residents in 1993.<br />
Currency: the togrik.1 togrik (togrog)100 möngö.<br />
Appendix 2 339<br />
Geopolitical situation: Mongolia borders the Russian Federative Republic<br />
on the north (its Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region, the Tuvan<br />
Autonomous Republic, the Buriat Autonomous Republic, and the Chita<br />
Region), and China on the south (its Sinkiang Uighur Autonomous<br />
Region and Inner Mongolian Autonomous Region).<br />
The republic is divided into twenty-one provinces (aymag), besides the<br />
capital which has an autonomous status.Listed alphabetically (with the<br />
provincial centers in parentheses unless their names are identical), they<br />
are:<br />
Arhangay (Tsetserleg); Bayan Hongor; Bayan Ölgiy (Ölgiy); Bulgan;<br />
Darhan Uul (Darhan); Dornod (Choybalsan); Dornogov (Saynshand);
340 Appendix 2<br />
Dundgov (Mandalgov); Dzavhan (Uliastay); Gov Altay (Altay); Gov<br />
Sümber (Choyr); Hentiy (Öndorhaan); Hovd; Hövsgöl (Mörön);<br />
Ömnögöv (Dalandzadgad); Orhon (Erdenet); Övörhangay (Arvayheer);<br />
Selenge (Sühbaatar); Sühbaatar (Baruun urt); Töv (Dzuun mod); and<br />
Uvs (Ulaangom).
Select bibliography<br />
BIBLIOGRAPHIES, ENCYCLOPEDIAS, MULTIVOLUME<br />
SURVEYS, SPECIAL REFERENCE MANUALS AND<br />
PERIODICALS<br />
Bregel, Yu. Bibliography of Islamic Central Asia (Bloomington, 1995).3 vols.<br />
Encyclopaedia Iranica.1985– (in progress) An ambitious multivolume project<br />
founded by E.Yarshater; its scope resolutely includes Western and Eastern<br />
Turkestan as areas of Iranian habitation, languages or culture.Especially<br />
relevant segments for our subject are Bukhara, in vol.4, pp.511–45;<br />
Central Asia, in vol.5, pp.159–242; and Chinese Turkestan, in vol.5, pp.<br />
461–84; as well as entries Archeology V, VII, Architecture IV, and Art VI,<br />
VIII.<br />
The Encyclopaedia of Islam.1960– (in progress).New edition of a basic reference<br />
work whose 1st edition appeared between 1913 and 1938.<br />
The Encyclopedia of Religion, edited by M.Eliade, (New York, 1987).Articles<br />
“Islam: an overview,” by Fazlur Rahman; “Islam in Central Asia,” by A.<br />
Bennigsen and Fanny E.Bryan; “Islam in China,” by M.Rossabi;<br />
“Shiism,” by W.Madelung and S.H.Nasr; “Sunnah,” by Marilyn<br />
Waldman; “Tariqah,” by A.H.Johns; “Buddhism” by F.E.Reynolds, Ch.<br />
Hallisey, R.E.Emmerick, W.Heissig, and H.Guenther; “Shamanism,” by<br />
M.Eliade and Anna-Leena Siikala.<br />
Philologiae Turcicae Fundamenta (Wiesbaden, 1959–64).2 vols; in German, French<br />
or English.An authoritative introduction to Turkic languages and literatures<br />
by an international consortium of scholars.<br />
The Cambridge History of China.1978– (in progress); but volume numbers do not<br />
correspond to the chronological sequence of publication.Especially relevant<br />
for our subject are vol.3, part I, Cambridge, 1979 and vol.II, part 1,<br />
Cambridge, 1978.<br />
The Cambridge History of Early Inner Asia (CHEIA), edited by D.Sinor, 1990.An<br />
excellent one-volume reference work on the nomadic populations of Inner<br />
Asia; this limitation excludes, however, the area’s sedentary civilizations.<br />
The Cambridge History of Iran.Vols.4–7 (1975–91) cover the Islamic period from<br />
the Arab conquest to the present.<br />
The Cambridge History of Islam.1978.4 volumes.<br />
341
342 Select bibliography<br />
Barthold, W.(V.V.Bartold).An Historical Geography of Iran (Princeton, 1984);<br />
translation, with annotations by Yu.Bregel and C.E.Bosworth, of<br />
Barthold’s Istoricheskiy obzor Irana.<br />
Bosworth, C.E.The New Islamic Dynasties: A Chronological and Genealogical Manual<br />
(Edinburgh and New York, 1996).<br />
Herrmann, K. Historical and Commercial Atlas of China (Cambridge, Mass., 1935).<br />
An Historical Atlas of Islam.Published to accompany the Encyclopaedia of Islam<br />
(Leiden, 1981).<br />
Lane-Poole, S. The Mohammadan Dynasties (London, 1894).A basic reference<br />
work, which V.V. Bartold translated into Russian with improved and<br />
expanded coverage for Central Asia: Musulmanskie dinastii: Khronologicheskie<br />
i genealogicheskie tablitsy s istoricheskimi vvedeniyami (St.Petersburg, 1899).<br />
Bartold’s translation was also used by Turkish and Persian scholars for their<br />
translations and editions: Halil Edhem, Düvel-i islamiye (Istanbul, 1927;<br />
Turkish in Arabic script); and Sadiq Sajjadi, Tarikh-i dawlatha-yi islami va<br />
khandanha-yi hukumatgar (Tehran, 1375/1955–56).<br />
Le Strange, G. The Lands of the Eastern Caliphate: Mesopotamia, Persia, and Central<br />
Asia from the Moslem conquest to the Time of Timur.A classic of historical geography<br />
published at Cambridge in 1905 and reissued by AMS Press, New<br />
York, in 1976 (Central Asia: Khurasan, pp.382–432; The Oxus, pp.<br />
433–45; Khwarizm, pp.446–59; Sughd, pp.460–73; The Provinces of the<br />
Jaxartes, pp.474–89).<br />
Sauvaget, J. Introduction à l’histoire de l’orient musulman; 2nd edn.revised by Cl.<br />
Cahen (Paris, 1961); and its English translation: Jean Sauvaget’s Introduction<br />
to the History of the Muslim East (Los Angeles, 1965).<br />
The Times Concise Atlas of World History.5th edn.(London, 1994).<br />
Wüstenfeld, H.A.Wüstenfeld-Mahler’sche Vergleichungstabellen zur Muslimischen und<br />
Iranischen Zeitrechnung.3rd edn.by J.Mayr and B.Spuler (Wiesbaden, 1961).<br />
Index Islamicus (Cambridge, 1958–).<br />
Cahiers du Monde Russe et Soviétique (Paris, 1969–93); continued by Cahiers du Monde<br />
Russe, 1994–<br />
Central Asia Monitor (Fairhaven, Vermont, 1992–).<br />
Central Asian Review (London, 1953–68).<br />
Central Asian Survey (Oxford, 1982–).<br />
Central Asiatic Journal (Wiesbaden, 1955–).<br />
Harvard Journal of Asiatic Studies (Cambridge, Mass., 1941–).<br />
Journal of Asian History (Wiesbaden, 1966–).<br />
Mongolian Studies (Bloomington, 1974–).<br />
Papers on Far Eastern History (Canberra, 1970–).<br />
Post-Soviet Geography (Silver Spring, MD, 1992–); continues Soviet Geography<br />
Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher (Wiesbaden, 1928–).<br />
Facts-on-File.<br />
Keesing’s Record of World Events.<br />
Europa World Year Book (London, 1926–).<br />
United Nations Organization. Demographic Yearbook.
Select bibliography 343<br />
PRINCIPAL SURVEYS OR INTRODUCTIONS<br />
Akiner, Shirin. Islamic Peoples of the Soviet Union.2nd edn.(London, 1986).<br />
Barthold, W.(V.V.Bartold).Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion.3rd edn.edited<br />
by C.E.Bosworth (London, 1968) (cited in our annotation as Barthold,<br />
Turkestan); a classic which covers the period from the arrival of Islam.The<br />
first edition of the original appeared as Turkestan v epokhu mongolskago nashestviya<br />
(St.Petersburg, 1900); it included in a separate volume a number of<br />
original sources in Arabic and Persian.The first English translation (published<br />
in 1928, and confusingly called “Second Edition”) had been edited<br />
by the author himself assisted by H.A.R.Gibb; the second printing of<br />
this “Second Edition” appeared in 1957 with corrections and additions by<br />
V.Minorsky.In 1963, a new edition of the Russian original appeared as<br />
the first volume of a 10–volume edition of Barthold’s works (V.V. Bartold,<br />
Sochineniya, Moscow, 1963–67).It has recently appeared in Persian and<br />
Arabic translations, and many of Barthold’s other works have also been<br />
published in English, German, French, Turkish, Persian, and Arabic<br />
translations.While Turkestan Down to the Mongol Invasion remains this<br />
scholar’s unsurpassed magnum opus, its very erudition and depth make it<br />
somewhat daunting reading for the non-specialist, who may at first prefer<br />
to reach for Bartold’s briefer studies mentioned below in the general bibliography.<br />
Bennigsen, A.and S.Enders Wimbush. Muslims of the Soviet Empire: A Guide<br />
(Bloomington, 1986).<br />
Golden, P.B.An Introduction to the History of the Turkic Peoples (Wiesbaden, 1992).<br />
A thoroughly documented work with emphasis on the linguistic dimension<br />
of the subject.<br />
Grousset, R. The Empire of the Steppes: A History of Central Asia (New Brunswick,<br />
1970).Translation of a classic whose French original was first published in<br />
1939 as L’Empire des steppes.Its chronological span starts with antiquity and<br />
ends with the eighteenth century.<br />
Hambis, L., ed. L’Asie Centrale: histoire et civilisation (Paris, 1977).<br />
Hambly, G., ed. Central Asia (New York, 1969).A cooperative effort of nine<br />
scholars, with the editor responsible for ten of its nineteen chapters.It first<br />
appeared in German translation as Zentralasien (Frankfurt, 1966).<br />
Krader, L. Peoples of Central Asia.3rd edn., (Bloomington and The Hague, 1971).<br />
Sinor, D. Introduction à l’étude de l’Eurasie Centrale (Wiesbaden, 1963).A thorough<br />
bibliographic introduction.<br />
Inner Asia: History, Civilization, Languages: A Syllabus (Bloomington, 1969).An<br />
abridgement of the above.<br />
OTHER LITERATURE<br />
Adshead, S.A.M.Central Asia in World History.(London, 1993).<br />
Aini, Sadriddin. See Ayni.
344 Select bibliography<br />
Aitmatov, C. The White Ship (New York, 1972); a novel, also published in a<br />
different translation as The White Steamship (London, 1972).Translated<br />
from the Russian original Belyi parokhod (Moscow, 1968) (the Kyrgyz<br />
version, translated as Ak keme from the Russian original, appeared only<br />
later).The author, although writing mostly in Russian, became with this<br />
and other novels and short stories a famous champion of national values<br />
of the Kyrgyz and of other Central Asian Turks.<br />
Akiner, Shirin, ed. Mongolia Today (London, 1991).<br />
Algar, H.“A brief history of the Naqshbandi order,” in Naqshbandis:<br />
Cheminements et situation actuelle d’un ordre mystique musulman . . . Table Ronde de<br />
Sèvres, 1985 (Paris and Istanbul, 1990).<br />
“The Naqshbandi order: a preliminary survey,” Studia Islamica 54 (1976):<br />
123–52.<br />
Allsen, T.T.“Mahmud Yalavach, Mas’ud Beg, Ali Beg, Safaliq, Bujir,” in In the<br />
Service of the Khan: Eminent Personalities of the Early Mongol Yuan Period, ed.I.de<br />
Rachewiltz (Wiesbaden, 1993), pp.122–36.<br />
“Mongol empire: an overview,” Encyclopedia of Asian History, (New York and<br />
London, 1988), vol.3, pp.23–30.<br />
Mongol Imperialism: The Policies of the Grand Qan Möngke in China, Russia, and the<br />
Islamic Lands, 1251–1259 (Berkeley, 1987).<br />
“The rise of the Mongolian empire and Mongolian rule in North China,”<br />
Cambridge History of China, vol.6 (1994), pp.321–413.<br />
“Spiritual geography and political legitimacy in the eastern steppe,” in<br />
Ideology in the Formation of the Early States, ed.H.J.M.Claessen.(Leiden,<br />
1996), pp.116–35.<br />
“The Yüan dynasty and the Uighurs of Turfan in the 13th century,” in China<br />
Among Equals: the Middle Kingdom and its Neighbors, 10th-14th Centuries, ed.M.<br />
Rossabi (Berkeley, 1983).<br />
Allworth, E.A., ed.Central Asia: 130 Years of Russian Dominance.(Durham and<br />
London, 1994).<br />
The Modern Uzbeks (Stanford, 1990).<br />
Nationalities of the Soviet East: Publications and Writing Systems: A Bibliographical<br />
Directory and Transliteration Tables for Iranian and Turkic Language Publications,<br />
1818–1945 (New York, 1971).<br />
Uzbek Literary Politics.(London and The Hague, 1964).<br />
Amanzholova, Dina Akhmetzhanovna. Kazakhskiy avtonomizm i Rossiya: istoriya<br />
dvizheniya Alash (Kazakh autonomism and Russia: a history of the Alash<br />
movement) (Moscow, 1994).<br />
Asfendiyarov, Sandzhar Dzhafarovich (1889–1938). Istoriya Kazakhstana (History<br />
of Kazakhstan) (Alma-Ata, 1993).2nd edn.(1st edn.published in 1935,<br />
but was subsequently suppressed, concurrently with the author’s disappearance<br />
in the Gulag).<br />
Aubin, Françoise.“Mongolie,” and “Mongolie (République Populaire de),”<br />
Encyclopaedia Universalis (Paris, 1992), vol.15, pp.656–84.<br />
Aubin, J.“Le khanat de Čagatai et le Khorasan (1334–1380),” Turcica 8 (1970):<br />
16–60.
Select bibliography 345<br />
“Réseau pastoral et réseau caravanier: les grand’routes du Khorassan à<br />
l’époque mongole,” Le monde iranien et l’Islam 1 (1971): 105–30.<br />
Ayalon, D.“The Great Yasa of Chingiz Khan: a reexamination,” Studia<br />
Islamica, nos.32–3, 36, 38 (1971–73).<br />
Ayni, Sadriddin (1878–1954). Ëddoshtha (Memoirs) (Dushanbe, 1949–54).4<br />
vols.; in Cyrillic script; two editions in the Arabic script have also been published:<br />
Stalinabad (Dushanbe) 1958–59; and Tehran 1983 (as Yaddashtha;<br />
edited by Saidi Sirjani); the author also wrote an Uzbek version of his<br />
memoirs: Esdaliklar, which was published in Tashkent, while several<br />
Russian editions of its Russian translation appeared in Moscow as<br />
Vospominaniya; finally an English translation of vol.1 by J.Perry and Rachel<br />
Lehr has appeared as The Sands of Oxus: Boyhood Reminiscences of Sadridding<br />
[sic] Aini (Costa Mesa, 1998).<br />
Bacon, Elizabeth. Central Asians under Russian Rule: A Study in Culture Change.2nd<br />
edn.(Ithaca, 1980).<br />
Bartold, V.V.(W.Barthold).Four Studies on the History of Central Asia; translated<br />
from the Russian by Vladimir and Tatiana Minorsky (Leiden, 1956–62).3<br />
vols.The four studies are: vol.1, A Short History of Turkestan; and History of<br />
Semireche; vol.2, Ulugh Beg and his Time; vol.3, Mir ‘Ali Shir; and A History of<br />
the Turkman People.<br />
Histoire des Turcs d’Asie Centrale (Paris, 1948); French adaptation of Bartold’s<br />
Zwölf Vorlesungen über die Geschichte der Turken Mittelasiens.Reprint<br />
Hildesheim, 1962.(based on lectures delivered at the University of<br />
Istanbul in 1926).<br />
“O pogrebenii Timura” (“The burial of Timur”), in Zapiski Vostochnogo otdeleniya<br />
Imperatorskogo Russkogo Arkheologicheskogo Obshchestva 23 (1916): 1–32,<br />
and reprinted in his Sochineniya, vol.2, pt.2, pp.423–54.The article’s interest<br />
has been enhanced with the translation/updating by J.M.Rogers in<br />
Iran: Journal of the British Institute of Persian Studies, 12 (1974): 65–87.<br />
Baskakov, N.A.Altayskaya semya yazykov i ee izuchenie (The Altaic family of languages<br />
and its study) (Moscow, 1981).<br />
Vvedenie v izuchenie tyurkskikh yazykov (Introduction to the study of Turkic languages)<br />
(Moscow, 1969).<br />
Batmaev, M.M.Kalmyki v XVII-XVIII vv. (The Kalmyks in the 17th–18th centuries)<br />
(Elista, 1992).<br />
Bazin, L. Les systèmes chronologiques dans le monde Turk ancien (Budapest and Paris,<br />
1991).<br />
Bečka, J.“Literature and men of letters in Tajikistan,” Journal of Turkish Studies<br />
(Harvard University), 18 (1994): 263–99.<br />
Sadriddin Ayni: Father of Modern Tajik Culture (Naples, 1980).<br />
“Traditional schools in the works of Sadriddin Ayni and other writers of<br />
Central Asia,” Archiv Orientální 39 (1971): 284–321; 40 (1972): 130–63.<br />
Becker, S. Russia’s Protectorates in Central Asia: Bukhara and Khiva, 1865–1924<br />
(Cambridge, Mass., 1968).<br />
Belenitskiy, A.M.et al.Srednevekovyi gorod Sredney Azii (The medieval city of<br />
Central Asia) (Leningrad, 1973).
346 Select bibliography<br />
Bennigsen, A.and S.Enders Wimbush.Muslim National Communism in the Soviet<br />
Union: A Revolutionary Strategy for the Colonial World. (Chicago and London,<br />
1979).<br />
Mystics and Commissars (Berkeley, 1987).Translation of their Le soufi et le commissaire:<br />
les confréries musulmanes en USSR (Paris, 1986).<br />
Bennigsen, A.and Chantal Lemercier-Quelquejay.La Presse et le mouvement<br />
national chez les musulmans de Russie avant 1920 (Paris and La Haye, 1964).<br />
Benson, Linda. The Ili Rebellion: The Moslem Challenge to Chinese Authority in<br />
Xinjiang, 1944–1949 (Armonk and London, 1990).<br />
Blair, Sheila S.and J.M.Bloom The Art and Architecture of Islam, 1250–1800 (New<br />
Haven, 1994).(Pelican History of Art).<br />
Bodrogligeti, A.“Yasavi ideology in Muhammad Shaybani Khan’s vision of an<br />
Uzbek Islamic empire,” Harvard Journal of Turkish Studies 18 (1994): 41–56.<br />
Bosworth, C.E.The Ghaznavids (Edinburgh, 1963).<br />
The Later Ghaznavids (New York, 1977).<br />
Boulger, D.Ch.The Life of Yakoob Beg, Athalik Ghazi, and Badaulet, Ameer of Kashgar.<br />
(London, 1878).<br />
Boulnois, Lucette. The Silk Road (London, 1966).Translation of her Route de la<br />
Soie.<br />
Boyle, J.A.The Mongol World Empire, 1206–1370 (London, 1977).<br />
“The seasonal residences of the Great Khan Ögedei,” Central Asiatic Journal<br />
16 (1972): 125–31.<br />
Brandenburg, D. Die Madrasa; Ursprung, Entwicklung, Ausbreitung und künstlerische<br />
Gestaltung der islamischen Moschee-Hochschule (Graz, 1978).<br />
Samarkand: Studien zur islamischen Baukunst in Uzbekistan (Zentralasien) (Berlin and<br />
Hessling, 1972).<br />
Bregel, Yu.Excellent articles in the Encyclopaedia Iranica: see entries with his signature<br />
in the sections on “Bukhara” and “Central Asia.”<br />
“Khokand, Khanate of,” Encyclopedia of Asian History, vol.2, pp.301–3.<br />
Buell, P.D.“Sino-Khitan administration in Mongol Bukhara,” Journal of Asian<br />
History 13/2 (1979): 121–51.<br />
Burton, Audrey. Bukharan Trade, 1558–1718 (Bloomington, 1993).<br />
Caroe, O. Soviet Empire: The Turks of Central Asia and Stalinism (London, 1953).<br />
Carrère d’Encausse, Hélène. The End of the Soviet Empire: The Triumph of the Nations<br />
(New York, 1993).<br />
Islam and the Russian Empire: Reform and Revolution in Central Asia (Berkeley, 1988);<br />
translation of her Réforme et révolution chez les Musulmans de l’Empire Russe:<br />
Bukhara 1867–1924, 2nd edn.(Paris, 1981).<br />
Castagné, J. Les Basmatchis: le mouvement national des indigènes d’Asie Centrale (Paris,<br />
1925).<br />
Central Asia: Its Strategic Importance and Future Prospects. Ed.H.Malik (New York,<br />
1994).<br />
Chalidze, Francheska.“Aral Sea crisis: a legacy of Soviet rule,” Central Asia<br />
Monitor 1 (1992): 30–6.<br />
“Plateau Usturt,” Central Asia Monitor 3 (1992): 35–8.<br />
Ch’en, Ch’ing-lung. Çin ve bati kaynaklarina göre 1828 isyanlarindan Yakup Bey’e kadar
Select bibliography 347<br />
Dogu Türkistan tarihi (A history of Eastern Turkestan from the uprisings of<br />
1828 to Yakub Beg according to Chinese and western sources) (Tai-Pei,<br />
1967).<br />
Clark, L.V. “Introduction to the Uygur civil documents of East Turkestan<br />
(13th–14th cc.).” PhD dissertation, Indiana University 1975.<br />
Clubb, O.E.China and Russia: The “Great Game” (New York, 1971).<br />
Courant, M. L’Asie Centrale aux XVIIe et XVIIIe siècles; empire Kalmouk ou empire<br />
Mantchou? (Paris and Lyon, 1912).<br />
Critchlow, J. Nationalism in Uzbekistan: A Soviet Republic’s Road to Sovereignty.<br />
(Boulder, 1991).<br />
Curtis, G.E.ed.Kazakstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan:<br />
Country Studies (Washington, D.C., 1997) (Area Handbook Series).<br />
Dabbs, J.S.History of the Discovery and Exploration of Chinese Turkestan (The Hague,<br />
1963).<br />
Dale, S.F.Indian Merchants and Eurasian Trade, 1600–1750 (Cambridge, 1994).<br />
“Steppe humanism: the autobiographical writings of Zahir al-Din<br />
Muhammad Babur, 1483–1530,” International Journal of Middle East Studies<br />
22 (1990): 37–58.<br />
Dawson, C., ed. The Mongol Mission (London and New York, 1955).<br />
Deny, J.“Un soyurghal du timouride Chahruh en écriture ouigoure,” Journal<br />
Asiatique (1957): 253–66.<br />
DeWeese, D. Islamization and Native Religion in the Golden Horde: Baba Tükles and<br />
Conversion to Islam in Historical and Epic Tradition (University Park,<br />
Pennsylvania, 1994).<br />
Dickson, M.B.“Uzbek dynastic theory in the sixteenth century,” Proceedings of<br />
the 15th International Congress of Orientalists (Moscow, 1960), pp.208–16.<br />
Doerfer, G. Türkische und mongolische Elemente im Neupersischen, 4 vols.(Wiesbaden,<br />
1963–75).<br />
Donnelly, A.S.“Peter the Great and Central Asia,” Canadian Slavonic Papers 17<br />
(1975): 202–17.<br />
Dreyer, June. China’s Forty Millions: Minority Nationalities and National Integration in<br />
the People’s Republic of China (Cambridge, Mass., 1976).<br />
Dunnell, Ruth W. The Great State of White and High: Budhism and State Formation in<br />
Eleventh-Century Xia (Honolulu, 1996).<br />
Eckmann, J. Chagatay Manual (Bloomington, 1966).<br />
Egorov, V.L.Istoricheskaya geografiya Zolotoy Ordy v XIII-XIV vv. (Historical geography<br />
of the Golden Horde in the 13th–14th centuries) (Moscow,<br />
1985).<br />
Ettinghausen, R.and O.Grabar.The Art and Architecture of Islam, 650–1250<br />
(Harmondsworth and New York, 1987).(Pelican History of Art).<br />
Feldman, W.“Interpreting the poetry of Makhtumquli,” in Muslims in Central<br />
Asia: Expression of Identity and Change, ed.Jo-Ann Gross, (Durham and<br />
London, 1992), pp.167–89.<br />
Feschbach, M.and A.Friendly.Ecocide in the USSR: Health and Nature Under Siege.<br />
(New York, 1992).<br />
Fierman, W., ed. Central Asia: The Failed Transformation (Boulder, 1991).
348 Select bibliography<br />
Language Planning and National Development: The Uzbek Experience.(Berlin and<br />
New York, 1991).<br />
Fletcher, J.“China and Central Asia, 1368–1884,” in The Chinese World Order,<br />
ed.J.K.Fairbank (Cambridge, 1968), pp.206–24.<br />
“The heyday of the Ch’ing order in Mongolia, Sinkiang, and Tibet,”<br />
Cambridge History of China, vol.10, pt.1 (1978): 351–95.<br />
“The Mongols: ecological and social perspectives,” Harvard Journal of Asiatic<br />
Studies 46:1 (1986): 11–50.<br />
Forbes, A.D.W.Warlords and Muslims in Chinese Central Asia: A Political History of<br />
Sinkiang, 1911–1949 (Cambridge, 1986).<br />
Forsyth, J. A History of the Peoples of Siberia (Cambridge, 1992).<br />
Forsyth, T.D.Report of a Mission to Yarkund in 1873 (Calcutta, 1875).<br />
Frye, R.N.Bukhara: The Medieval Achievement (Norman, 1965).<br />
The Heritage of Central Asia: from Antiquity to the Turkish Expansion (Princeton,<br />
1996).<br />
Fuchs, W.“Das Turfangebiet: seine äussere Geschichte bis in die T’angzeit,”<br />
Ostasiatische Zeitschrift, n.s., 2 (1926): 124–66.<br />
Gabain, Annemarie von. Das Leben im uigurischen Königreich von Qočo (850–1250).<br />
2 vols.(Wiesbaden, 1973).<br />
“Steppe und Stadt im Leben der ältesten Türken,” Der Islam 29 (1949):<br />
30–62.<br />
Galuzo, G. Turkistan – koloniya: ocherki istorii Turkestana ot zavoevaniya russkimi do<br />
revolyutsii 1917 goda (The colony of Turkestan: an outline of the history of<br />
Turkestan from its conquest by the Russians to the 1917 revolution)<br />
(Moscow, 1929).<br />
Geyer, Georgie Anne. Waiting for Winter to End: An Extraordinary Journey through<br />
Soviet Central Asia (Washington and London, 1994).<br />
Gibb, H.A.R.The Arab Conquests in Central Asia (New York, 1923).<br />
Giraud, R. L’Empire des Turcs Célestes: les règnes d’Elterich, Qapghan et Bilgä<br />
(680–734) (Paris, 1960).<br />
Gleason, Gregory. The Central Asian States: Discovering Independence (Boulder, 1997).<br />
Gohlman, W.E.The Life of Ibn Sina (Albany, 1974).<br />
Golden, P. Khazar Studies.2 vols.(Budapest, 1980).<br />
“The migrations of the Oghuz,” Archivum Ottomanicum 4 (1972): 45–84.<br />
“Turkic languages,” Encyclopedia of Asian History, vol.4, pp.152–55.<br />
Goldstein, M.C.and Cynthia M.Beall.The Changing World of Mongolia’s Nomads<br />
(Berkeley, 1994).<br />
Golombek, Lisa. The Timurid Shrine at Gazur Gah (Toronto, 1969).<br />
Golombek, Lisa and D.Wilber.The Timurid Architecture of Iran and Turan.2 vols.<br />
(Princeton, 1988).<br />
Gray, B., ed. The Arts of the Book in Central Asia, 14th–16th Centuries (London,<br />
1979).<br />
Grekov, B.D.and A.Yu.Yakubovskiy.Zolotaya Orda i eë padenie (Moscow, 1950).<br />
(The Golden Horde and its fall; the French translation, La Horde d’Or: la<br />
domination tatare au XIIIe siècle de la mer Jaune a la mer Noire, Paris 1939, is based<br />
on the first edition of the Russian original, Zolotaya Orda.)
Select bibliography 349<br />
Gross, Jo-Ann.“Khoja Ahrar: a study of the perceptions of religious power and<br />
prestige in the late Timurid period.” PhD dissertation, New York<br />
University, 1982.<br />
Gross, Jo-Ann, ed. Muslims in Central Asia: Expressions of Identity and Change<br />
(Durham and London, 1992).<br />
Grousset, R. Conqueror of the World (New York, 1966).A biography of Genghis<br />
Khan translated from the French original, Le conquérant du monde, Paris<br />
1944; the introduction to the translation, written by D.Sinor, includes a<br />
magnificent tribute to the great Frenchman.<br />
Haarmann, U.“Staat und Religion in Transoxanien im frühen 16.<br />
Jahrhundert,” Zeitschrift der Deutschen Morgenländischen Gesellschaft 124/2<br />
(1974): 332–69.<br />
Haghayeghi, M. Islam and Politics in Central Asia (New York, 1995).<br />
Halkovic, S.A.The Mongols of the West (Bloomington, 1985).<br />
Hamada, M.“Islamic saints and their mausoleums,” Acta Asiatica 34 (1978):<br />
79–98.<br />
Hamilton, J.R.Les Ouighours à l’époque des cinq dynasties d’après les documents chinois<br />
(Paris, 1955).<br />
“Toquz Oguz et On Uygur,” Journal Asiatique (1962): 23–63.<br />
Hartmann, M. Chinesisch-Turkestan: Geschichte, Versetzung, Geistesleben und Wirtschaft<br />
(Halle, 1908).<br />
Ein Heiligenstaat in Islam; das Ende der Čaghataiden und die Herrschaft der Chogˇas in<br />
Kasgarien (Berlin, 1905).<br />
Hayit, B. Basmatschi: nationaler Kampf Turkestans in den Jahren 1917 bis 1934 (Köln,<br />
1992).<br />
Sowjetrussische Orientpolitik am Beispiel Turkestans (Köln and Berlin, 1962).<br />
Turkestan im XX. Jahrhundert (Darmstadt, 1956).<br />
Turkestan zwischen Russland und China (Amsterdam, 1971).<br />
“Zwei Gestalten in der modernen Literatur der Özbek-Türken Turkestans:<br />
Qadir und Čolpan,” Die Welt des Islams 9 (1964): 225–36.<br />
Hedin, S. The Silk Road (London, 1938).<br />
Hillenbrand, R. Islamic Architecture: Form, Function and Meaning (New York, 1994).<br />
Historical Monuments of Islam in the U.S.S.R. Tashkent, Moslem Religious Board of<br />
Central Asia and Kazakhstan, n.d.<br />
Hobsbawm, E. Nations and Nationalism since 1780.2nd edn.(Cambridge, 1992).<br />
Holdsworth, Mary. Turkestan in the Nineteenth Century (London and Oxford,<br />
1959).<br />
Hookham, Hilda. Timburlaine the Conqueror (London, 1968).<br />
Hopkirk, P. The Great Game: The Struggle for Empire in Central Asia (New York, 1994).<br />
Howorth, H.H.History of the Mongols, from the 9th to the 19th Centuries.4 vols.<br />
(London, 1876–80).<br />
Hsu, I.C.Y.The Ili Crisis: A Study of Sino-Russian Diplomacy, 1871 to 1881 (Oxford,<br />
1965).<br />
Ignatev, N.P.Mission of N.P. Ignatev to Khiva and Bukhara in 1858 (Newtonville,<br />
Mass., 1984). (Translation of Missiya v Khivu i Bukharu v 1858 godu fligel’adyutanta<br />
polkovnika N. Ignat’eva.)
350 Select bibliography<br />
Istoriya Kazakhskoy SSR.Alma-Ata 1979.5 vols.The “official” history of<br />
Kazakhstan written by a consortium of scholars under the auspices of the<br />
Kazakh Academy of Sciences and published in Russian.Despite the compilers’<br />
general compliance with the guidelines imposed by the political<br />
system, it is a valuable resource and will remain so until superseded by similarly<br />
ambitious projects produced in the new freer climate.It is the best<br />
from among parallel histories published in the other republics: Istoriya<br />
Kirgizskoy SSR, Istoriya Tadzhikskoy SSR, Istoriya Turkmenskoy SSR, and Istoriya<br />
Uzbekskoy SSR.Each also appeared in the language of the respective republic;<br />
these versions, however, came out in smaller editions, and have been<br />
all but unavailable outside of their homeland.It remains to be seen how<br />
their successors produced in the independent republics will be received by<br />
the scholarly community previously accustomed to easier access through<br />
Russian and through the centrally organized book trade in Moscow.At this<br />
time (1998), the first harbinger of this type, Uzbekiston tarihi (History of<br />
Uzbekistan; Tashkent 1994; 5 vols.), is still a rare occurrence in library collections.<br />
Jackson, P.“Dissolution of the Mongol empire,” Central Asiatic Journal 22 (1978):<br />
186–244.<br />
Jackson, P.and D.Morgan.The Mission of Friar William of Rubruck (London,<br />
1990).<br />
Jisl, L.“Wie sahen die alten Türken aus?” Ural-Altaische Jahrbücher 40 (1968):<br />
181–99.<br />
Julien, S.“Relation d’un voyage officiel dans le pays des Ougours (de 981 à 983)<br />
par Wang yen-te,” Journal Asiatique 4 (1847): 50–66.<br />
Karimov, I. Building the Future: Uzbekistan – its Own Model for Transition to a Market<br />
Economy (Tashkent, 1993).The author is President of Uzbekistan, and his<br />
book can serve as an example of publications likely to document the political<br />
and economic evolution in the newly independent republics; the fact<br />
that it was also published in English translation is significant, as is its<br />
version in Uzbek: Uzbekiston: milliy istiqlol, iqtisod, siësat, mafkura; nutqlar,<br />
maqolalar, suhbatlar (Tashkent, 1993).<br />
Kazakhstan (Washington, D.C., International Monetary Fund, 1993) (IMF<br />
Economic Reviews; 1993: 5).An updated expansion of the 1992 edition, with<br />
the implicit intention to make this an annual publication.There are parallel<br />
publications on Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, and<br />
Uzbekistan.<br />
Kazakhstan: The Transition to a Market Economy (Washington D.C., World Bank,<br />
1993) (A World Bank Country Study).There are parellel publications, with<br />
slight variations in the subtitles, on Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan,<br />
and Uzbekistan.<br />
Khanykov, N. Bokhara: Its Amir and its People (London, 1845); translation of his<br />
Opisanie bukharskogo khanstva (St.Petersburg, 1843).<br />
Khazanov, A.M.After the USSR: Ethnicity, Nationalism, and Politics in the<br />
Commonwealth of Independent States (Madison, 1995).A brilliant appraisal of<br />
the situation.
Select bibliography 351<br />
Nomads and the Outside Word.2nd edn (Madison, 1994).(The Russian original<br />
appeared in Moscow in 1983; the first English translation was published<br />
by Cambridge University Press in 1984.)<br />
“Underdevelopment and ethnic relations in Central Asia,” in Central Asia in<br />
Historical Perspective, ed.Beatrice F.Manz (Boulder, 1994), pp.144–63.<br />
Khodarkovsky, M. Where Two Worlds Met: The Russian State and the Kalmyk Nomads,<br />
1600–1771 (Ithaca and London, 1992).<br />
Kim, Ho-dong.“The Muslim rebellion and the Kashghar emirate in Chinese<br />
Central Asia, 1864–1877.” PhD dissertation, Harvard University<br />
1986.<br />
Knobloch, E. Beyond the Oxus: Archaeology, Art and Architecture of Central Asia<br />
(London, 1972).<br />
Kolstoe, P. Russians in the Former Soviet Republics (London, 1995).(Especially pp.<br />
209–58, devoted to Central Asia.)<br />
Kotov, K.F.Mestnaya natsional’naya avtonomiya v Kitayskoy Narodnoy Respublike na<br />
primere Sin’tszyan-Uygurskoy Avtnomnoy Oblasti (Local national autonomy in<br />
the People’s Republic of China on the example of the Sinkiang Uighur<br />
Autonomous Region) (Moscow, 1959).See also its summary in Central Asian<br />
Review (London), 8 (1960): 441–57.<br />
Kuropatkin, A.N.Kashgaria: Historical-Geographical Sketch of the Country.(Calcutta,<br />
1882).Translation of his Kashgariya: istoriko-geograficheskiy ocherk (St.<br />
Petersburg, 1879).<br />
Kyrgyzstan: The Transition to a Market Economy (Washington, D.C., World Bank,<br />
1993) (A World Bank Country Study).<br />
Landau, J.M.Pan-Turkism: From Irredentism to Cooperation.2nd edn.(London,<br />
1995).<br />
The Politics of Pan-Islam (London, 1994).<br />
Lattimore, O. Pivot of Asia: Sinkiang and the Inner Asian frontiers of China and Russia.<br />
(Boston, 1950).<br />
Studies in Frontier History (Oxford 1962).<br />
Lecoq, A.von.Die buddhistische Spätantike in Mittelasien 7 vols.(Berlin 1922–33).<br />
Lewis, B. The Arabs in History.New edn.(Oxford, 1993).<br />
Lewis, R.A.Geographic Perspectives on Soviet Central Asia (London, 1992).<br />
Lindner, R.P.“What was a nomadic tribe?” Comparative Studies in Society and<br />
History 24 (1982): 689–711.<br />
Liu, Mau-tsai. Die chinesischen Nachrichten zur Geschichte der Ost-Türken (T’u-küe)<br />
(Wiesbaden, 1958).<br />
Lubin, Nancy. Labour and Nationality in Soviet Central Asia (Princeton, 1984).<br />
McChesney, R.D. “The Amirs of Muslim Central Asia in the XVIIth Century,”<br />
Journal of Economic and Social History of the Orient, 26 (1983): 33–70.<br />
“Economic and Social Aspects of Public Architecture of Bukhara in the<br />
1560s and 1570s,” Islamic Art 2 (1987): 217–42.<br />
Waqf in Central Asia: Four Hundred Years in the History of a Muslim Shrine<br />
(Princeton, 1991).<br />
Central Asia: Foundations of Change (Princeton, 1996).<br />
McNeill, W.H.Plagues and Peoples (New York, 1989).
352 Select bibliography<br />
Mackenzie, M.“Kaufman of Turkestan: an assessment of his administration<br />
(1867–1881),” Slavic Review 26 (1967): 265–85.<br />
Mackerras, C. The Uighur Empire According to the T’ang Dynastic Histories: A Study in<br />
Sino-Uighur Relations 744–840 (Canberra, 1972).<br />
China’s Minorities: Integration and Modernization in the 20th Century (Hongkong and<br />
New York, 1994).<br />
Mair, Victor H.“Perso-Turkic bakhshiMandarin po-shih: learned doctor,”<br />
Journal of Turkish Studies (Harvard University), 16 (1992): 117–27.<br />
Maitra, K.M.A Persian Embassy to China, Being an Extract from Zubdatul Tavarikh of<br />
Hafiz Abru (New York, 1934).<br />
Mano, E.“Moghulistan,” Acta Asiatica (Tokyo), 34 (1978): 46–60.<br />
Manz, Beatrice F., ed. Central Asia in Historical Perspective (Boulder 1994).<br />
The Rise and Rule of Tamerlane (Cambridge, 1989).<br />
Medlin, W.K.et al.Education and Development in Central Asia: A Case Study on Social<br />
Change in Uzbekistan (Leiden, 1971).<br />
Menges, K. The Turkic Languages and Peoples (Wiesbaden, 1968).<br />
Minorsky, V.“Tamim ibn Bahr’s journey to the Uyghurs,” Bulletin of the School of<br />
Oriental and African Studies (BSOAS) 12 (1947): 275–305.<br />
Morgan, D.“The ‘Great Yasa of Chingiz Khan’ and Mongol law in the<br />
Ilkhanate,” BSOAS 49/1 (1986): 163–76.<br />
The Mongols (Oxford, 1986).<br />
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SELECTED SAMPLES <strong>OF</strong> PRIMARY SOURCES AND<br />
ANCILLARY MATERIALS<br />
Abu l-Ghazi Bahadur Khan (1603–63).[Shajara-i Turk; Turki] Histoire des Mongols<br />
et des Tatares; Turki text and French translation published by P.I.<br />
Desmaisons (St.Petersburg, 1871–74).<br />
Babur, Zahir al-Din Muhammad (1483–1530). Baburname [Turki] Baburnamah:<br />
Chaghatay Turkish text with Abdul-Rahim Khankhanan’s Persian translation.<br />
Turkish transcription, Persian edition and English translation by W.M.<br />
Thackston (Harvard University, Department of Near Eastern Languages<br />
and Civilizations, 1993).3 vols.This valuable new presentation does not<br />
entirely supersede the facsimile edition and translation published by<br />
Annette S.Beveridge (London, 1905–22).
356 Select bibliography<br />
Bayhaqi, Abu l-Fazl Muhammad (995–1077). Tarikh-i Bayhaqi [Persian].The<br />
best edition is by Ali Akbar Fayyaz as Tarikh-i Mas’udi (Meshed,<br />
1350/1972); Russian translation by A.K.Arends as Istoriya Masuda, 2nd<br />
edn.(Moscow, 1969).<br />
Bertels, E.E.Iz arkhiva sheykhov Dzhuybari (From the archive of the Juybar<br />
shaykhs) (Moscow and Leningrad, 1938).<br />
Bretschneider, E. Medieval Researches from Eastern Asiatic Sources.2 vols.(London,<br />
1888).<br />
Bukhari, Mir Abd al-Karim (fl.1804–30).Histoire de l’Asie Centrale . . . [Persian]<br />
publiée, traduite et annotée par Ch. Schefer (Paris, 1876).<br />
Bukharskiy vakf XIII v.: faksimile, izdanie teksta, perevod s arabskogo i persidskogo, vvedenie<br />
i kommentariy A.K. Arendsa, A.B. Khalilova, O.D. Chekhovich (The Bukharan<br />
waqf from the 13th century...) (Moscow, 1979) (Pismennye pamyatniki<br />
Vostoka, 52).<br />
Carpini, John Plano (d.1252).[Historia Mongalorum.Latin] History of the Mongols;<br />
a new edition of the Latin original accompanied by an Italian translation<br />
and notes: Storia dei Mongoli . . . Spoleto 1989.English translation on pp.<br />
3–76 of Dawson, The Mongol Mission.<br />
Ch’ang Ch’un (1148–1227).[Account of his journey; Chinese]; translations in<br />
Bretschneider, Medieval researchers . . ., vol.1, pp.35–108; A.Waley, Travels<br />
of an Alchemist: the Journey of the Taoist, Ch’ang-Ch’un, from China to the Hindukush<br />
at the Summons of Chingiz Khan, Recorded by his Disciple Li Chih-Ch’ang (London,<br />
1931); and Jeannette Mirsky, The Great Chinese Travelers (Chicago, 1964), pp.<br />
115–171.<br />
Chavannes, E. Documents sur les Tou-kiue (Turcs) occidentaux [Chinese, in French<br />
translation] (St.Petersburg, 1903).<br />
Chekhovich, Olga D. Bukharskie dokumenty XIV veka (Bukharan documents from<br />
the 14th century; Persian or Arabic with Russian translation and annotation)<br />
(Tashkent, 1965).<br />
Samarkandskie dokumenty XV-XVI vv.(Samarkand documents from the 15th-<br />
16th centuries; Persian or Arabic with Russian translation and annotation)<br />
(Moscow, 1974).<br />
Churas, Shah Mahmud ibn Fazil (d.1696).[Tarikh; Persian] Khronika. . .<br />
(Moscow, 1976). Kriticheskiy tekst, perevod, kommentarii, issledovanie i ukazateli<br />
O.F. Akimushkina (Pismennye Pamyatniki Vostoka, 45).Edition and translation<br />
by Akimushkin.<br />
Clavijo, Ruy Gonzales de (d.1412).[Embajada a Tamorlan; Spanish] Embassy to<br />
Tamerlane, 1403–1406; translated by G.Le Strange (London, 1928); edition<br />
and study by F.Lopez Estrada (Madrid, 1943).<br />
Dawson, C., ed. The Mongol Mission (London and New York, 1955).<br />
Donish, A.(1826–97).[Tarikh-i saltanat-i manghitiya; Persian] Traktat Akhmada<br />
Donisha “Istoriya mangitskoy dinastii.” Russian translation by I. A. Nadzhafova<br />
(Dushanbe, 1967).<br />
Gardizi (11th century).[Zayn al-akhbar.Persian] Tarikh-i Gardizi.Ed.A.Habibi<br />
(Tehran, 1363/1984).
Select bibliography 357<br />
Partial translation by P.Martinez, “Gardizi’s two chapters on the Turks,”<br />
Archivum Eurasiae Medii Aevi 2 (1982): 109–217.<br />
Hafiz-i Tanish Bukhari (16th century).[Sharafnamah-i shahi, also called Abdallahnama;<br />
Persian].Edited and translated by M.A.Salakhetdinova 2 vols.<br />
(Moscow, 1983).<br />
Hamilton, J.R.Manuscrits ouigours du IXe-Xe siècle de Touen- Houang; textes établis,<br />
traduits et commentés 2 vols.(Paris, 1986).<br />
Hamilton, J.R.and Shimin Geng.“L’Inscription ouigoure de la stèle commemorative<br />
des iduq qut de Qotcho,” Turcica 13 (1981): 10–54.<br />
Haydar Dughlat (1499–1551). Tarikh-i Rashidi.See Tarikh-i Rashidi.<br />
Hsüan-tsang (596–664).[Si-yu-ki; Chinese] Buddhist records of the Western world.<br />
Translated from the Chinese of Hiuen Tsiang (AD 629) by S.Beal.2 vols.<br />
(London, 1884).Mirsky, The Great Chinese Travelers, pp.29–114.<br />
Hudud al-’Alam. “The Regions of the World.” A Persian geography, 372 AH/982<br />
AD, translated by V.Minorsky (London, 1937).(GMS 11); see also<br />
Minorsky’s “Addenda to the Hudud al-Alam,” BSOAS 17 (1955):<br />
250–70.<br />
Ibn Arabshah (1392–1450). Aja’ib al-maqdur fi akhbar Timur [Arabic].Ed.A.<br />
Himsi (Beirut, 1986); English translation of this account of Timur’s career<br />
by J.H.Sanders as Tamerlane (London, 1936).<br />
Ibn Battuta (fl.1304–68).[Rihla; Arabic] Edited and translated by C.<br />
Defrémery and B.R.Sanguinetti as Voyages d’Ibn Battuta, 4 vols.(Paris,<br />
1854); English translation by H.A.R.Gibb as The Travels of Ibn Battuta. 4<br />
vols.(Cambridge, 1971–95).<br />
Ibn Fadlan (fl.921–22).[Rihla; Arabic] Edited and translated into German by<br />
Z.V.Togan as Ibn Fadlans Reisebericht (Leipzig, 1939).<br />
Ibn Hawqal (fl.943–73).Kitab surat al-ard [Arabic].3rd edn.by J.H.Kramers<br />
(Leiden, 1938); translated into French by G.Wiet as Configuration de la terre.<br />
2 vols.(Paris and Beirut, 1964).<br />
Jenkinson, P.(fl.16th century; d.1611).Account of his journey in Early Voyages<br />
and Travels to Russia and Persia (London, 1886).<br />
Juvayni, Ata-Malik (1226–83). Tarikh-i jahan-gusha [Persian].Ed.M.Qazvini.3<br />
vols.(London and Leiden, 1912–37).English translation by J.A.Boyle, The<br />
History of the World Conqueror.2 vols.(Cambridge, Mass., 1958).<br />
Juzjani, Minhaj Siraj (1193–1260). Tabaqat-i Nasiri [Persian].2nd edn., 2 vols.<br />
(Kabul, 1342–43/1963–64); English translation by H.G.Raverty, 2 vols.<br />
(London, 1881).(Bibliotheca Indica 78).<br />
Kashghari, Mahmud (fl.1072).Divanu lugat-it-Türk [Arabic/Turkic].Edited and<br />
published by B.Atalay.6 vols.(Ankara, 1939–57).Translated by R.<br />
Dankoff and J.Kelly as Compendium of the Turkic Dialects, 3 vols.(Cambridge,<br />
Mass., 1982–85), vol. 1., parts 1–3 (1982–85).<br />
Khadr, M.“Deux actes de waqf d’un Qarahanide d’Asie Centrale,” Journal<br />
Asiatique (1967): 305–34.<br />
Khunji, Fazl Allah ibn Ruzbihan (1455–1521). Mihmannama-i Bukhara [Persian].<br />
Ed.M.Sutudah (Tehran, 1976); ed.and translated into Russian by A.K.
358 Select bibliography<br />
Arends (Moscow, 1976).German abridgement by Ursula Ott, Transoxanien<br />
und Turkestan zu Beginn des 16. Jahrhunderts: das Mihman-nama-yi Buhara<br />
(Freiburg, 1974).<br />
Khvand Amir (1475–1536). Habib-i siyar [Persian].Edited by D.Siyaqi, 2nd<br />
edn.4 vols.(Tehran, 1353/1974).English translation by W.M.Thackston<br />
(Cambridge, Mass., 1994– (in progress)).<br />
Kurat, A.N.Topkapi Sarayi Müzesi Arsivindeki Altin Ordu, Kirim ve Türkistan hanlarina<br />
ait yarlik ve bitikler (Yarliks and bitiks issued by the khans of the Golden<br />
Horde, the Crimea and Turkestan in the archive of the Topkapi Palace<br />
Museum) (Istanbul, 1940).<br />
Markov, A. Inventarnyi katalog musul’manskikh monet Imperatorskogo Ermitazha<br />
(Inventory catalog of Muslim coins in the Imperial Hermitage) (St.<br />
Petersburg, 1896).<br />
Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (1499–1551). Tarikh-i Rashidi.See Tarikh-i<br />
Rashidi.<br />
Munis Khwarazmi (1778–1829). Firdaws al-iqbal: history of Khorezm, ed.Yu.<br />
Bregel [Turki] (Leiden, 1988).(Also noteworthy is the editor’s introduction<br />
on pp.1–60.)<br />
Narshakhi (d.959).Tarikh-i Bukhara [Persian]; editions Ch.Schefer (Paris, 1892),<br />
and M.Razavi (Tehran, 1351/1972); English translation by R.Frye as The<br />
History of Bukhara (Cambridge, Mass., 1954).<br />
Nasawi, Muhammad b.Ahmad (d.1260).Sirat Jalal al-Din.Arabic text edited<br />
and translated into French by O.Houdas 2 vols.(Paris, 1891–95).<br />
Nava’i, Mir Ali Shir (1441–1501). Muhakamat al-lughatayn [Turki] Muhakamat allughatain<br />
. . . Edited and translated by R.Devereux (Leiden, 1966).<br />
Polo, Marco (1254–1323). The book of Ser Marco Polo, the Venetian, concerning the kingdoms<br />
and marvels of the East ...translated and edited by H.Yule.2 vols.<br />
(London, 1871).See also H.Cordier, Ser Marco Polo: notes and addenda to Sir<br />
Henry Yule’s edition (London, 1920).<br />
Rashid al-Din (1247–1318). Jami’ al-tavarikh [Persian].After several partial editions<br />
and translations of this important source, a full critical edition prepared<br />
by Muhammad Rawshan has now been published (Tehran, 1995);<br />
from among the partial translations, one example: The Successors of Genghis<br />
Khan, translated by J.A.Boyle (New York and London, 1971).<br />
Riza Quli Khan (1800–71). Relation de l’ambassade au Kharezm de Riza Qouly Khan<br />
[Persian], traduite et annotée par Ch.Schefer (Paris, 1979).<br />
Rubruck, William (Willem van Ruysbroeck) (1210–70). The Journey of William of<br />
Rubruck [Latin]; published by A.van den Wyngaert, Sinica Franciscana,<br />
vol.1: Itinera et relationes Fratrum Minorum saec. XIII et XIV, (Quaracchi-<br />
Firenze, 1929); English translation (“by a Nun of Stanbrook Abbey”) in<br />
Ch.Dawson, The Mongol Mission, pp.87–220.<br />
Sagang Sechen (b.1604).Erdeni-yin tobci; [Mongolian] Geschichte der Ostmongolen<br />
und ihres Fürstenhauses . . . übersetzt, mit dem Originaltexte . . . herausgegeben von I.J.<br />
Schmidt (St.Petersburg and Leipzig, 1829; reprint The Hague 1961);<br />
English translation by J.R.Krueger, A History of the Eastern Mongols to 1662<br />
(Bloomington, 1964).
Select bibliography 359<br />
Salih, Muhammad (1455–1535). Shaybani-name [Turki].Edition and German<br />
translation by H.Vambéry (Vienna, 1885).<br />
Schiltberger, J.(b.1380).[Reisebuch] Als Sklave im Osmanischen Reich und bei den<br />
Tataren, 1394–1427.Translated from Middle German by Ulrich<br />
Schlemmer (Stuttgart, 1983).<br />
Schlegel, G. Die chinesische Inschrift auf dem uigurischen Denkmal in Kara Balghasun<br />
(Helsinki, 1896).(MSFOu 9).<br />
The Secret History of the Mongols.[Mongolian: Manghol un niuca tobca’an; Chinese:<br />
Yuan-ch’ao-pi-shi] There are several editions and translations into German,<br />
Russian, French and English; the three English translations are by I.de<br />
Rachewiltz, in Papers on Far Eastern History, vols.4–5, 10, 13, 16, 18, 21, 23,<br />
26, 30, 31, and 33 (Canberra, 1971–86); F.Cleaves, as The Secret History of<br />
the Mongols (Cambridge, Mass., 1982), and U. Onon, as The History and the<br />
Life of Ginggis Khan (Leiden, 1990).<br />
Seyfi Chelebi.[Ottoman Turkish] L’Ouvrage de Seyfi Çelebi, historien Ottoman du<br />
XVIe siècle; edited, critique, translation and commentary by J.Matuz (Paris,<br />
1968).<br />
Tarikh-i Rashidi [Persian].By Mirza Muhammad Haydar Dughlat (1499–1551).<br />
English translation by N.Elias and E.Denison Ross as Tarikh-i Rashidi: a<br />
History of the Moghuls of Central Asia (London, 1898); ed.and trans.as Mirza<br />
Haydar Dughlat, Tarikh-i-Rashidi: a History of the Khan of Moghulistan, by<br />
W.M.Thackston, Harvard University Dept.of Near Eastern Languages<br />
and Civilizations, 1996, vol.1 (Persian text), vol.2 (English translation).<br />
Tekin, T. A Grammar of Orkhon Turkic (Bloomington, 1968).Includes texts and<br />
translations of the Orkhon inscriptions, pp.231–95.<br />
Thackston, W.M.A Century of Princes: Sources on Timurid History and Art, selected<br />
and translated by W.M.Thackston (Cambridge, Mass., 1989).<br />
Türkische Turfantexte.Texts with various degrees of analysis and translation published<br />
in 10 vols.by the Academy of Sciences, Berlin; vols.1–5 were published<br />
and equipped with an index by W.Bang and Annemarie von<br />
Gabain (Berlin, 1929–31).<br />
Umari, Ibn Fadl Allah (1301–49). Masalik al-absar fi mamalik al-amsar [Arabic].<br />
Edited and translated by K.Lech as Das Mongolische Weltreich: Al Umari’s<br />
Darstellung der mongolischen Reiche in seinem Werk Masalik (Wiesbaden, 1968).<br />
Vali, Mahmud ibn Amir (17th century). Bahr al-asrar fi manaqib al- akhyar<br />
[Persian].Russian translation of the geographical part by B.A.Akhmedov,<br />
More tayn otnositelno doblestey blagorodnykh (Tashkent, 1977).<br />
Yazdi, Sharaf al-Din Ali (d.1454).Zafarname [Persian].Ed.M.Abbasi.2 vols.<br />
(Tehran, 1336/1957).French translation (somewhat abridged) by A.L.M.<br />
Pétis de la Croix (1698–1751), Histoire de Timur-Bec.4 vols.(Paris, 1722);<br />
and an English translation of the French abridgment as The History of<br />
Timur-Bec, known by the name of Tamerlaine the Great, Emperor of the Moguls and<br />
Tatars.2 vols.(London, 1722).<br />
Yusuf Khass Hajib (11th century).Qutadghu Bilig [Turkic].Edited by R.R.<br />
Arat (Ankara, 1979); English translation by R.Dankoff, Wisdom of Royal<br />
Glory (Chicago, 1983).
Abbasids, second dynasty of caliphs, 50, 62–4<br />
Abdalaziz, Toqay-Timurid khan, 177<br />
Abdallah II, Abulkhayrid-Shaybanid khan,<br />
150, 154, 155–8, 177<br />
Abd al-Latif, Abulkhayrid-Shaybanid khan,<br />
157<br />
Abd al-Rashid, Chaghatayid khan, 165<br />
Abilay, Kazakh khan of the Lesser Horde, 196<br />
Abu l-Ghazi Bahadur Khan, Yadigarid-<br />
Shaybanid khan, 183–6<br />
Abulkhayr, Shaybanid khan, 144–5, 174<br />
Abulkhayrid Shaybanids see Shaybanids<br />
Abu Muslim, organizer of the “Abbasid<br />
revolution” in Khurasan, 63–5<br />
Abu Said, Timurid ruler, Samarkand, 136–7,<br />
141<br />
Afaqiya see Aqtaghliq<br />
“Afghan Finger,” 13<br />
Agzybirlik, Turkmen political party, 305<br />
Ahrar, Khwaja Ubaydallah, Naqshbandi<br />
shaykh, 140–1; Ahrari lodge in<br />
Samarkand, 156–8<br />
Aitmatov, Chingiz, Kyrgyz writer, 45, 239–40,<br />
244; Aitmatov, Torekul, his father, 240<br />
Akaev, Askar, president of Kyrgyzstan, 281,<br />
306<br />
Akbar, Mughal emperor, 152, 155<br />
Akmeshit or Aq Meshit, a town on the lower<br />
Syr Darya, 27, 190, 198<br />
Akmolinsk, Aqmola, a city in northern<br />
Kazakhstan, now the republic’s capital as<br />
Astana, 285–6<br />
Aksu, a town in southern Sinkiang on the Silk<br />
Road, 165<br />
Aktogay, a railroad junction in Kazakhstan, 22<br />
Ala al-Din Muhammad Khwarazmshah, 100<br />
Alai, a mountain range in Kyrgyzstan, 12<br />
Alash Orda, a Kazakh political movement, 215<br />
Alatoo or Ala Too, a mountain range in<br />
northern Kyrgyzstan and south-eastern<br />
Kazakhstan, 15<br />
Index<br />
Alexander the Great, 13<br />
Alexandria Eschate, a city founded by<br />
Alexander, predecessor of Khujand, 14<br />
Ali, the Prophet Muhammad’s cousin,<br />
brother-in-law and first imam of Shia<br />
Islam, 11<br />
Alim Khan, the last emir of Bukhara, 222<br />
Alimjan, Hamid, Uzbek poet, 247<br />
Almaty or Alma-Ata, former capital of<br />
Kazakhstan, 22, 23, 27<br />
Alp Arslan, Seljukid sultan, victor over the<br />
Byzantine emperor, 95<br />
Altai, a mountain range in southen Siberia<br />
and Mongolia, 2, 18, 22<br />
Altan Khan, Genghisid khan in Mongolia,<br />
167–8<br />
Altishahr, 16–17, 165, 204<br />
Amir al-muminin, 180<br />
Amu Darya, largest river in Central Asia, 4–9,<br />
12, 182; also known as Oxus and<br />
Jayhun<br />
Amursana, 172–3<br />
Angara, river-outflow from Lake Baikal, 22<br />
anthems, national, 249–51<br />
Aq süyek (“White bone”), Qara süyek (“Black<br />
bone”), terms for the upper and lower<br />
strata of pre-modern Kazakh society, 196<br />
Aqtaghliq (“White Mountain” or Afaqiya),<br />
Qarataghliq (“Black Mountain” or<br />
Ishaqiya), two dervish dynasties ruling<br />
southern Sinkiang, 160, 173, 329–30<br />
Arab conquest of Central Asia, 56–62; victory<br />
over the Chinese, 67–9<br />
Arab Muhammad I, Yadigarid-Shaybanid<br />
khan of Khiva, 183<br />
Aral Sea, viii, 3, 8, 6–9, 27, 293<br />
Ashgabat or Ashkhabad, capital of<br />
Turkmenistan, viii, 10<br />
Astana, capital of Kazakhstan, 285–6;<br />
previously known as Aqmola (Kazakh) or<br />
Akmolinsk (Russian)
Auliye-Ata, a town in south-eastern<br />
Kazakhstan, now called Jambul, 24<br />
Ayni, Sadriddin, Tajik writer and public<br />
figure, 240–6, 345<br />
Ayuka, Torghut Kalmyk khan on the lower<br />
Volga, 175<br />
Azat, Kazakh political party, 305<br />
Baatur Khungtaiji, 170, 173<br />
Babur, Zahir al-Din, Timurid ruler of Fergana<br />
and founder of the Mughal empire, 116,<br />
147, 151–3<br />
Baburname, autobiography of Babur, 151–3,<br />
355<br />
Badakhshan, 12–13; see also Gorno-<br />
Badakhshan<br />
Baikal, a lake in southern Siberia, 20<br />
Baikonur, a site in Kazakhstan, base of<br />
Russia’s space program, 27, 286<br />
Bakharzi, Sayf al-Din, Kubravi shaykh and<br />
founder of the lodge at Fathabad, 117–19<br />
Baku Commissars, or 26 Baku Commissars,<br />
Bolsheviks martyred on Turkmen soil,<br />
312<br />
Balasaghun, a site in northern Kyrgyzstan,<br />
one of the four Qarakhanid cities, 24<br />
Balkh, a city in northern Afghanistan,<br />
successor of ancient Bactra, 12, 155<br />
Balkhan, Greater and Lesser, mountains in<br />
western Turkmenistan, 7<br />
Balkhash, a lake in south-eastern Kazakhstan,<br />
22<br />
Barak or Baraq Khan madrasa in Tashkent,<br />
one of the two functioning Islamic<br />
seminaries under Soviet rule, 230<br />
Barchuq, Uighur ruler of Qocho, 81, 120–2<br />
Barskaun or Barskoon, way-station on the Silk<br />
Road in northern Kyrgyzstan, 25<br />
Barthold, W., 343, 345<br />
Bashkiria, Bashkir Autonomous Republic,<br />
Bashqurtistan, viii, xi, 28<br />
Batu, a grandson of Genghis Khan, founder<br />
of the Golden Horde, 109<br />
Batuids, 322–3; see also Golden Horde<br />
Bayqara, Husayn, 162<br />
Bekovich-Cherkasskiy, commander of an<br />
expedition sent by Peter the Great to<br />
Khiva, 186, 197<br />
Berke, Batu’s brother and successor, 117<br />
Bih-Afarid, leader of a religious sect and<br />
uprising against the Arabs, 64<br />
Bihzad, Timurid painter, 135–6<br />
Bilad al-Turk, “Land of the Turks,” early Arab<br />
name for Central Asia beyond<br />
Transoxania, 14, 25<br />
Index 361<br />
Binkath, early name of the region around<br />
Tashkent, 25<br />
Birlik, Uzbek political movement, 304<br />
Bishbalik, northern capital of the Uighur<br />
kingdom of Qocho, 17; Peiting in<br />
Chinese<br />
Bishkek, capital of Kyrgyzstan, 24; called<br />
Frunze in the Soviet period<br />
Buddhism, 23, 39–40<br />
Bükey’s Horde, 197<br />
Bukhara, 4; capital of the Samanids, 171;<br />
“Bukhara-i Sharif,” 178; Emirate of, 180;<br />
People’s Republic of, 221<br />
Bukhari, author of the Sahih, 71<br />
Bulghar, a Turkic people and their realm on<br />
the middle Volga, 9<br />
Buriat Autonomous Republic or Buriatia, viii,<br />
xi, 21<br />
Burkan Kaldun, a sacred mountain in the<br />
Hentei range in Mongolia, 19<br />
Byzantium, 46<br />
Caspian Sea, viii, 2<br />
Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, 196,<br />
200<br />
census, 231<br />
Central Asia: concept of, xi–xii; centrality of,<br />
as an asset or liability, 288–9<br />
Chaghatay, Genghis Khan’s second son,<br />
founder of the line of the Chaghatayids,<br />
112–13<br />
Chaghatay gurungi, 238<br />
Chaghatayids, 117–22, 159–69, 321–2<br />
Changan, eastern terminus of the Silk Road,<br />
capital of Tang China 2, 52<br />
Char Bakr, Juybari-Naqshbandi lodge at<br />
Sumitan near Bukhara, 178<br />
Chernyaev, M.G., commander of Tsarist<br />
troops that stormed Tashkent, 198<br />
Chevron Oil Company, 287<br />
Chinese Turkestan see Sinkiang<br />
Ching or Manchu, last dynasty to rule China,<br />
20<br />
Choibalsan, second president of Mongolia,<br />
298<br />
Chokay, Mustafa, 210<br />
Cholpan, Uzbek poet, martyred by the<br />
Bolsheviks, 234<br />
Christianity, 23, 49<br />
Chu, river in northern Kyrgyzstan and<br />
southern Kazakhstan, 24<br />
CIS (Commonwealth of Independent States),<br />
275<br />
collectivization, 236, 300<br />
Communist Party, 228–9, 283
362 Index<br />
constitution, Soviet, 283<br />
cotton, 8, 235, 252<br />
Dahbid or Dahpid, shrine of the Naqshbandi<br />
shaykh Khwaja Ahmad Kasani near<br />
Samarkand, 159<br />
Dalai-lama, 168–9<br />
Dandanqan, site of Seljukid victory over the<br />
Ghaznavids, 93<br />
Dari, term for Farsi (Persian) in its formative<br />
stage, 32, 74<br />
darugha, darughachi, Mongol term for governor<br />
or tax-collector, 113<br />
Dasht-i Kipchak, 2, 28, 161<br />
Dayan Khan, Chenghisid khan in Mongolia,<br />
167<br />
desert, 1, 14–15<br />
Dimitriy Donskoy, prince of Moscow, victor<br />
over the Mongols, 121<br />
Directorate of Muslims of Central Asia and<br />
Kazakhstan, 230<br />
Diwan lughat al-Turk, 87–91<br />
dobrovolnoe prisoedinenie, “voluntary unification<br />
[with Russia],” doctrine of, 284–5<br />
Dolon Nor, site of Mongol acceptance of<br />
Manchu suzerainty, 171<br />
Donish, Ahmad, Bukharan scholar and civil<br />
servant, 241<br />
Dukchi Ishon, leader of a native uprising<br />
against Tsarist rule, 207<br />
Dushanbe, capital of Tajikistan, 12; called<br />
Stalinabad between 1936 and 1961<br />
Eastern Turkestan see Sinkiang<br />
Elista, capital of Kalmykia, viii, xi<br />
Erdeniz Zu, Buddhist monastery at<br />
Qaraqorum, 19, 299<br />
Erk, Uzbek political party, 304<br />
Esen Buqa II, Chaghatayid ruler of<br />
Moghulistan, 141<br />
Farab, a site near the Syr Darya, birthplace of<br />
al-Farabi, 25<br />
Farabi, an Islamic philosopher and philologist,<br />
25<br />
Fathabad, a Kubraviya dervish lodge near<br />
Bukhara, 119<br />
Fayzabad, administrative center of Afghan<br />
Badakhshan, 13<br />
Fergana, 9–10<br />
Firuzkuh, mountains in northern Afghanistan,<br />
10<br />
Fitrat, Abdarrauf, Bukharan and Uzbek<br />
author, scholar, and public figure, 206,<br />
222<br />
French North Africa, compared with Russian<br />
Central Asia, 200, 284<br />
Frunze (city), name of Bishkek under Soviet<br />
rule, 24, 233–4<br />
Galdan, khan of Jungaria, 170–1<br />
Galdan Tsereng, khan of Jungaria, 172<br />
Gandan, Buddhist monastery in Ulaanbaatar,<br />
299<br />
Garmo, a mountain in Tajikistan, as “Pik<br />
Kommunizma” the highest mountain of<br />
the former Soviet empire, 15<br />
gas, natural, 286–7, 293<br />
Gaspirali, Ismail Beg or Gasprinskiy, 207<br />
Genghis Khan, 7, 19, 104–5<br />
Genghisids, 320<br />
ghazi, Muslims fighting the jihad (holy war), 25<br />
Ghaznavids, 96–8, 318<br />
Gijduvani, Abd al-Khaliq, a sufi shaykh, 138<br />
Girey, a Genghisid prince, with Janibeg laid<br />
the foundations of the Kazakh<br />
nationality,146<br />
glasnost, “openness,” freedom of expression<br />
introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, 8,<br />
259, 303, 311<br />
Gobi, 2, 16, 18, 20<br />
Gök-tepe, southern Turkmenistan, site of two<br />
memorable battles between the<br />
Turkmens and Tsarist troops, 312<br />
Golden Horde, 28, 322–3 ; see also Batuids;<br />
Dasht-i Kipchak<br />
Gorbachev, Mikhail, 253, 256–7, 260, 303–4<br />
Gorno-Altai Autonomous Region, x, xi, 21;<br />
Gorno-Altaisk, the capital<br />
goskhoz, Mongol version of the sovkhoz (state<br />
farm), 300<br />
Great Seljuks see Seljukids<br />
Grousset, René, 3, 343, 349<br />
Gunt, a river in Badakhshan, 13<br />
Güyük, Genghis Khan’s grandson and second<br />
successor, 109<br />
Hafiz-i Tanish Bukhari, author of Abdallah<br />
II’s biography Sharafname-i Shahi, 178<br />
Hami or Qomul, a city in southern Sinkiang<br />
on the Silk Road, 2, 16, 52, 165<br />
Hamzaabad, Uzbek enclave in southern<br />
Kyrgyzstan, site of a Muslim and<br />
Bolshevik shrine, 247<br />
Han (ethnic Chinese), 274<br />
Hangai, mountains in Mongolia, 1, 18<br />
Haydar Mirza, author of the Tarikh-i Rashidi,<br />
116, 161<br />
Hazrat-i Turkistan, nickname of Khwaja<br />
Ahmad Yasavi, 26
Hentei, mountains in Mongolia, 2, 18<br />
Herat, a city in north-western Afghanistan,<br />
second capital of the Timurid empire, 10<br />
hijra, “hegira,” the Prophet Muhammad’s<br />
emigration from Mecca to Medina in<br />
622, beginning of the Islamic era, 47<br />
Hindukush, mountains in Afghanistan, 5, 10<br />
Hindustan, 6<br />
Hsi-hsia, Chinese name of the Tangut empire<br />
in Kansu, 104–5<br />
Hsüan-tsang, a Buddhist pilgrim, 49, 80–1<br />
Huehot or Hohhot, capital of Inner<br />
Mongolia, 20<br />
Ibn Battuta, Moroccan traveller, author of the<br />
Rihla (“Journey”)119–20<br />
Ibn Fadlan, member of a mission from the<br />
caliph to Bulghar, author of another<br />
Rihla, 9<br />
Ibn Hawqal, Arab traveller and geographer,<br />
73–5<br />
Ibn Sina (Avicenna), 86–7<br />
idiqut, title of the Uighur ruler of Qocho, 81,<br />
120<br />
Ili, river and valley, 22, 23<br />
Ilkhanids, 110, 121, 323<br />
Inakids or Inaqids, a non-Genghisid dynasty,<br />
the last to rule Khiva, 187–8, 328<br />
independence, of Central Asian republics,<br />
254, 275–6<br />
Inner Asia, concept of, xi–xii<br />
Inner Mongolia, viii, xi<br />
inorodtsy, 209<br />
Iran, viii, 6<br />
Iranian languages, 32, 55<br />
Irdana Biy, ruler of Khoqand, 189<br />
Irkutsk, 21<br />
irrigation, 7–9<br />
Irtysh, a river in Siberia, 22<br />
Isfijab see Sayram<br />
Ishaqiya see Qarataghlilq<br />
Ishim, Kazakh khan, 173<br />
ishon, 38<br />
Islam, 34–9, 49–50<br />
Ismaili Shia, 13<br />
Issyk Kul Lake, 15, 24<br />
Istoriya Kazakhskoy SSR, “History of the<br />
Kazakh SSR,” 349–50<br />
Itil, 9, 28<br />
Ivan IV “the Terrible,” tsar of Russia, 162–3<br />
Jadids, jadidism, 206<br />
Jalal al-din Mangubirti, 107<br />
Jambul, 24; previously known as Auliye-Ata<br />
Jami, Abd al-Rahman, Timurid poet, 135–6<br />
Index 363<br />
Jand, early Islamic town on the lower Syr<br />
Darya, 27<br />
Janibeg, Genghisid prince, with Girey laid the<br />
foundations of the Kazakh nationality,<br />
xxx<br />
Janibeg, khan of the Golden Horde, 116<br />
Janids or Ashtarkhanids or Toqay-Timurids,<br />
177, 325–6<br />
Jasaly, a railroad station in south-western<br />
Kazakhstan, Leninsk in the Soviet<br />
period, 27<br />
Jayhun see Amu Darya<br />
Jetisu see Semireche<br />
jihad, 75<br />
Juchi, Genghis Khan’s eldest son, 107<br />
Juchids, Juchi’s descendants who included the<br />
Batuids (Golden Horde), Shaybanids,<br />
Toqay-Timurids, and Kazakh khans and<br />
sultans, 000<br />
Jungaria, 18<br />
Jungarian Gate, 22<br />
Jungars, 169; see also Oirats, Kalmyks<br />
Jurm, ancient city in Afghan Badakhshan,<br />
13<br />
Jurchen, a Tunguz people who conquered<br />
northern China from the Khitan and<br />
founded their dynasty of Chin, 99<br />
Jüz, Kazakh term for the Horde (tribal<br />
confederation), 164<br />
Kalmykia, Kalmyk Autonomous Republic,<br />
viii, xi<br />
Kalmyks, 145–7, 169, 175; see also Oirats,<br />
Jungars<br />
Karaganda, city in Kazakstan, center of a<br />
coal mining region, 232<br />
Karakalpakistan or Qoraqalpoghiston, 337<br />
Karakoram, mountains in northern Tibet, 2<br />
Karakum canal, irrigation canal in<br />
Turkmenistan, 8, 293–4<br />
Karakum, a desert in Turkmenistan, 2<br />
Karatau, mountains in southern Kazakhstan,<br />
14, 23, 25<br />
Karimov, Islam, president of Uzbekistan, 281,<br />
283, 294, 305–6<br />
Kasani, Khwaja Ahmad, “Makhdum-i<br />
Azam,” a Naqshbandi shaykh, 158–9,<br />
329<br />
Kashgar, 16–17, 52, 165<br />
Kashgari, Mahmud, author of the Diwan<br />
lughat al-Turk, 87–91<br />
Kashka Darya, a river in eastern Uzbekistan,<br />
4<br />
Kat, one of the two capitals of ancient<br />
Khwarazm, 6
364 Index<br />
Kaufman, Konstantin Petrovich von, Tsarist<br />
officer and second governor-general of<br />
Turkestan, 203<br />
Kazakh Hordes, tribal confederations in premodern<br />
Kazakhstan, 195–7<br />
Kazakhs, 145, 161, 195–7<br />
Kazakhstan, viii–xi, 6, 22, 24, 27–8, 216,<br />
331–3<br />
Kazan: Khanate of, 28; capital of Tatarstan,<br />
viii, xi, 9<br />
Kerulen or Keluren, a river in eastern<br />
Mongolia, 19<br />
Khalq Shurasi, “People’s Council,” parliament<br />
of the short-lived Khoqand experiment,<br />
214<br />
khangah, a lodge of sufi dervishes, 37<br />
Khans of Khiva see Yadigarids, Inaqids<br />
Khazar qaghanate, 9, 28<br />
Khitan, Qitan, proto-Mongol people who<br />
conquered northern China and ruled<br />
with the dynastic name Liao, 81–2<br />
Khiva, a city in south-eastern Khwarazm,<br />
capital and name of the last two khanates<br />
in the region, 7, 181–6, 327–8<br />
Khojaev, Fayzulla, a Bukharan and Uzbek<br />
public figure, 218, 237<br />
Khoqand, a city in western Fergana, 9;<br />
Khanate of, 187–93; center of the<br />
Khoqand experiment, 213–15<br />
Khorezm, People’s Republic of, 221–2<br />
Khorug, capital of Gorn-Badakhshan<br />
Autonomous Region, 13<br />
Khudayar Khan, the penultimate khan of the<br />
Khanate of Khoqand, 193<br />
Khujand, a city in north-western Tajikistan,<br />
14; called Leninabad in the Soviet period<br />
Khurasan, a historic region in southern<br />
Central Asia, 6, 10, 14, 47<br />
khwaja, a Persian title of respect that can mean<br />
a sufi shaykh, 37<br />
Khwajas, dynasty of, see Aqtaghliq,<br />
Qarataghliq<br />
Khwarazm, a historic region in western<br />
Central Asia, 6–8, 47<br />
Khwarazmshahs, 58–9, 106–7, 319–20<br />
Kiakhta, a town on the Russian side of the<br />
Mongolian border, 21<br />
Kipchak, name of a large group of Turkic<br />
tribes and languages in Kazakhstan and<br />
the Pontic steppes, 33<br />
Kipchak steppe see Dasht-i Kipchak<br />
Kök Turks, 21, 46, 51–6, 64–5<br />
Kolbin, Gennadiy, a Russian, replaced the<br />
Kazakh Kunaev as First Secretary of the<br />
Communist Party of Kazakhstan, 260–1<br />
Kopet Dagh, mountains along the<br />
Turkmen–Iranian border, 10<br />
korenizatsiya (“nativization”), 255<br />
Krasnovodsk, a port and railroad terminus on<br />
the Caspian coast of Turkmenistan, 10;<br />
now officially called Turkmenbashy<br />
Kubra, Najm al-Din, founder of the<br />
Kubraviya order of dervishes, 38, 249<br />
Kubraviya order of dervishes, 37<br />
Küchlüg, a Nayman chieftain and brief master<br />
of Central Asia, suppressed by the<br />
Mongols, 100<br />
Kuchum Khan, the last ruler of the Khanate<br />
of Sibir, 163<br />
Kül-tegin, a Kök-Türk prince, mentioned in<br />
the Orkhon inscriptions, 54<br />
Kulja, a city in northern Sinkiang, 263<br />
Kunaev, Dinmukhamed, a Kazakh, First<br />
Secretary of the Communist Party of<br />
Kazakhstan, replaced by Kolbin, an<br />
ethnic Russian, 255–6<br />
Kungrad or Kungrat, Turco-Mongol tribes<br />
speaking Kipchak Turkic, 186–7, 328<br />
küregen, gurgan, “son-in-law,” a title used by<br />
Timur, 125<br />
Kuropatkin, A.N., the last governor-general of<br />
Tsarist Turkestan, 205, 209<br />
Kushan Empire, 11<br />
Kushk, a river in northern Afghanistan and<br />
southern Turkmenistan, 10<br />
Kushka, a town and railroad terminus on the<br />
Turkmen side of the border, 10–11<br />
Kyrgyz, 21, 81–2, 159–60<br />
Kyrgyzstan, viii–xi, 21, 24, 334–5<br />
Kyzyl kum or Kyzylkum , a desert in<br />
Uzbekistan, 2<br />
Kyzyl Orda, 25, 27; previously called<br />
Akmeshit and Perovsk<br />
Kyzylsu, a river in Kyrgyzstan, 12, 16<br />
Lecoq, Albert von, German archaeologist in<br />
Turfan, 268<br />
Lenin, Vladimir Ilich, 211, 219, 250–3<br />
literacy, 230<br />
“Little Bukhara,” a nickname for Sinkiang,<br />
178<br />
Loyang, one of the two capitals of Tang<br />
China, 52<br />
Macartney, George, British consul in Kashgar,<br />
269<br />
Madali Khan, khan of Khoqand, 191–2<br />
Mahmud of Ghazna, 97–8<br />
Malik Shah I, Seljukid sultan, 95–6<br />
Mamay, the usurper khan of the Golden
Horde defeated by Dimitriy Donskoy,<br />
121<br />
Manchu or Ching, the last dynasty to rule<br />
China, 263–4<br />
Manghits, a non-Genghisid dynasty of emirs,<br />
the last to rule the Emirate of Bukhara,<br />
180–1, 326<br />
Manichaeism, 49<br />
Mansur Khan, a Chaghatayid khan in<br />
Sinkiang, 121, 165<br />
Mawarannahr see Transoxania<br />
mazar, shrine and site of pious visits, 38, 248<br />
Mazar-i Sharif, a city and shrine in northern<br />
Afghanistan, 11, 247<br />
Mecca, 47, 52<br />
Medina, 47, 52<br />
Merv, metropolis of historical Khurasan, now<br />
an archaeological site in Turkmenistan,<br />
10–11, 199<br />
metallurgy, 3<br />
Ming dynasty of Khoqand, 189, 326–7<br />
Mir Arab madrasa, Bukhara, one of the two<br />
functioning Islamic seminaries under<br />
Soviet rule, 230<br />
Moghulistan, 23, 24, 120–1<br />
Möngke, a grandson of Genghis Khan, his<br />
third successor, 110–11<br />
Mongolia, viii–xi, 297–302, 339–40<br />
Mongols, xi, 31<br />
Buddhist, 167–9<br />
conquering, 103–11<br />
western: see Oirats, Kalmyks, Jungars<br />
Mughals, name of the Timurid dynasty in<br />
India founded by Babur, 155<br />
Muhammad, the Prophet, 47<br />
multi-party democracy, 305–6<br />
Muqanna, self-styled prophet of a sect fighting<br />
the Arabs in Transoxania, 65<br />
Murghab, a river in Turkmenistan feeding the<br />
oasis of Merv, 10<br />
Nadira, Madali Khan’s wife and a poetess, 191<br />
Nadir Shah, 179<br />
Najaf, a town in Iraq and burial place of Ali,<br />
11<br />
Nanlu, “Southern Route,” name applied in<br />
the Manchu period to southern Sinkiang,<br />
16–17; see also Peilu<br />
Naqshband, Baha al-Din, founder of the<br />
Naqshbandiya order of dervishes, 137–9<br />
Naqshbandiya order of dervishes, 37–8,<br />
137–9, 156–9<br />
national delimitation see natsionalnoe<br />
razmezhevanie<br />
nationalism, 238<br />
Index 365<br />
nationalization, 230–1<br />
natsionalnoe razmezhevanie, 33, 222–5<br />
Navai, Mir Ali Shir, a Chaghatay poet and<br />
public figure in Timurid Herat, 133–5<br />
Nazarbaev, Nursultan, president of<br />
Kazakhstan, 261, 281<br />
“near abroad,” a recently formulated Russian<br />
concept of Central Asia, 315<br />
Nebit Dag, a town in western Turkmenistan in<br />
a natural gas-rich region, 7<br />
negdel, Mongol collective farm, 300<br />
Nishapur, a historic city in Persian Khurasan,<br />
10<br />
Niyaz, Khoja, an Uighur nationalist leader in<br />
Kashgar, 271<br />
Niyazi, Hamza Hakimzade, an Uzbek<br />
Bolshevik teacher and propagandist,<br />
247<br />
Niyazov, Saparmurat, president of<br />
Turkmenistan, now also offically called<br />
Turkmenbashy (“Chief of the<br />
Turkmens”), 281–2<br />
nomads, 1–3, 23, 27, 41, 236<br />
Novorossiysk, a port on the Black Sea and<br />
terminus of an oil pipeline from<br />
Kazakhstan, 288<br />
nuclear testing, 236<br />
Nukus, capital of Karakalpakistan, 337<br />
Numijkat (original name of Bukhara), 5<br />
Ögedey, third son and first successor of<br />
Genghis Khan, 19, 107<br />
Oghuz, one of the main groups of Turkic<br />
tribes and languages, 27, 93–5<br />
oil, 287–8<br />
Oirats or Western Mongols, 21, 169; see also<br />
Kalmyks, Jungars<br />
Omsk, a city in western Siberia, seat of the<br />
governor of the Governorate-General<br />
Steppe, 201<br />
Onon, a river in eastern Mongolia, 19<br />
Ordos, Mongol tribes in Inner Mongolia, 20<br />
Orenburg, a city in southern Russia and<br />
gateway to Kazakhstan, 27<br />
Orkhon, a river and valley in Mongolia, center<br />
of three steppe empires (Kök Turkic,<br />
Uighur, Mongol), 19<br />
Orkhon inscriptions, 53–5<br />
Osh, a town in western Kyrgyzstan marked by<br />
a large Uzbek minority, 292<br />
Otrar, an intersection on the Syr Darya, 25,<br />
26, 106, 125<br />
Ottoman Empire, 162–3, 257<br />
Outer Mongolia, x<br />
Oxus see Amu Darya
366 Index<br />
Pamir Boundary Commission (1895), 199<br />
Pamirs, a mountain knot in eastern Tajikistan,<br />
2<br />
Panj, name of the upper course of the Amu<br />
Darya, 12–13<br />
Panjikent, an archaeological site in northwestern<br />
Tajikistan, 4, 5<br />
Pan-Turkism, 33<br />
paper, manufacture of, 69<br />
“Parallel Islam,” 246<br />
Parsa, Muhammad, a Naqshbandi shaykh,<br />
138, 140<br />
Peilu, “Northern Route,” name applied in the<br />
Manchu period to northern Sinkiang, 17;<br />
see also Nanlu<br />
Pelliot, Paul, a French archaeologist, 268<br />
Perovsk see Akmeshit, Kyzyl Orda<br />
Persian language, 72, 76<br />
Peter the Great, Tsar of Russia, 175, 186, 196<br />
pipeline, oil, from Kazakhstan to<br />
Novorossiysk, 288<br />
pir, a sufi master, 37<br />
plague, 116<br />
Proclamation, issued by the Bolsheviks to the<br />
Muslims of Russia, 211<br />
Pulat or Pulad Khan, a Kazakh khan defeated<br />
by the Kalmyks, 174<br />
Pulatov, Abdurahim, a contemporary Uzbek<br />
activist, 304<br />
Pushkin, Alexander, Russian poet, 234<br />
Pushto, Pashto, 32<br />
Qadiriya order of dervishes, the only nonautochthonous<br />
order in Central Asia,<br />
37–8<br />
qaghan, qaghanate, 43<br />
qam, Turkic word for shaman, 000<br />
Qarabalghasun or Ordubaliq, capital of the<br />
Uighur qaghanate in Mongolia, 19<br />
Qarakhanids, the first Turkic dynasty to adopt<br />
Islam, 23, 83–5, 316–18<br />
Qarakhitay, 81–2, 99–100, 320<br />
Qaraqorum, capital of the Mongol empire,<br />
built by Ögedey, 19<br />
Qarataghliq Khwajas (“Black Mountain” or<br />
Ishaqiya), a dervish dynasty in Sinkiang,<br />
173, 330<br />
Qasim Khan, a Kazakh khan, 164<br />
Qasr-i Arifan, birthplace and shrine of Baha<br />
al-Din Naqshbnad, 137, 178, 248–9<br />
Qaydu, an Ögedeyid Genghisid, 111–12,<br />
159<br />
Qocho, southern capital of the Buddhist<br />
Uighur kingdom of Qocho, 17<br />
Qodirov, Pirimqul, an Uzbek writer, his<br />
historical noval Yulduzli tunla censured for<br />
glorifying Babur, 240, 252<br />
Qungrats see Inaqids<br />
quriltay, assembly of Mongol or Turkic tribal<br />
leaders, 23; the quriltay of 1206<br />
proclaimed Temujin as Genghis Khan,<br />
104<br />
Qutadghu Bilig, 92<br />
Qutayba ibn Muslim, launched the Arab<br />
conquest of Transoxania, 57–61<br />
Qutham ibn Abbas, the semi-legendary Arab<br />
warrior for Islam known as Shah-i Zinda,<br />
246<br />
Qutlugh Nigar Khanim, mother of Babur,<br />
147<br />
Radio Liberty, 289<br />
railroads, 204–5, 301<br />
Rakhmonov, Imomali, president of Tajikistan,<br />
281<br />
Rashid al-Din, Ilkhanid minister and<br />
historian, 185<br />
Rashidov, Sharaf, leader of Soviet Uzbekistan,<br />
254–5; rashidovshchina, 257<br />
Reagan, Ronald, president of the United<br />
States, 257<br />
Red Army, 221<br />
Referendum of March 1991 on the<br />
preservation of the Soviet Union, 261<br />
Revolution<br />
Abbasid, 62<br />
Bolshevik, 210<br />
February 1917, 209<br />
“First” (in Kashgar), 271; “Second” (in<br />
Kulja), 272<br />
ribat, a fortified dervish lodge, often at the limes<br />
of the Dar al-Islam, 25, 75<br />
Romanovskiy, D.I., first governor of the<br />
Governorate-General of Turkestan, 205<br />
Russia, Soviet<br />
reconquers Centrral Asia, 213–21;<br />
reorganizes it through “national<br />
delimitation,” 222–4; contradictory<br />
aspects of rule, 230, 238; doctrine of<br />
dobrovolnoe prisoedinenie, 234–5<br />
Russia, Tsarist<br />
rise of, 162; conquers Siberia, 174;<br />
conquers Central Asia, 195–9; organizes<br />
and exploits it as a colony, 201–5<br />
Russian Turkestan, x<br />
Russification, 236<br />
russko-tuzemnye shkoly, “Russo-native schools,”<br />
205<br />
Ryskulov, Turar, Kazakhk-Kyrgyz patriot and<br />
political leader, 218, 220, 255
Sabri, Masud, head of native government in<br />
Sinkiang, 272<br />
Safed Kuh, mountains in northern<br />
Afghanistan, 10<br />
Saifuddin, Uighur nationalist, leader of the<br />
Second Revolution, 272<br />
Samanid mausoleum, 75<br />
Samanids, 71–3, 316<br />
Samarkand, 4, 5, 12<br />
Sanjar, Seljukid sultan, 96, 98–9<br />
Saray, capital of the Golden Horde on the<br />
lower Volga, 28<br />
Sarts, 32–3, 187<br />
Sasanians, last pre-Islamic dynasty of Iran, 32,<br />
46<br />
Sayan, mountains in southern Siberia,, 21<br />
Sayram, birthplace of Khwaja Ahmad Yasavi,<br />
25–6<br />
Scythians, 28<br />
Secret History of the Mongols, 359<br />
sedentaries, 27, 41<br />
Seljukids, 93–9, 318–19<br />
Semireche, 22, 23–4<br />
settlers, Slavic, in Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan,<br />
236<br />
Shahidi, Burhan, 272<br />
Shahimardan, 247<br />
Shah-i Turkistan, 26, 143<br />
Shah-i Zinda, 246–7<br />
shaman, shamanism, 40–41<br />
sharia, 113<br />
Shaybani, Muhammad, 141, 143, 149–54<br />
Shaybanids, 149–57, 325<br />
shaykh, 37<br />
Sheng Shi-tsai, governor of Sinkiang, 271–2<br />
Shevardnadze, Eduard, president of Georgia,<br />
311<br />
Shir Ghazi, khan of Khiva, 186<br />
Shura-i Islam, 210, 214<br />
Siberia, viii, 20<br />
Sibir, city and khanate, 163<br />
Sighnaq, 25, 27<br />
Silk Road, 15–16, 80<br />
Sinkiang, viii–xi, 16, 47, 263–74, 314, 338–9<br />
Slavic languages, 32<br />
sliyanie, “[multiethnic] fusion,” as a goal of<br />
Soviet policy, 232<br />
Sogdia, 5, 25, 48; Sogdian language, 74<br />
Sokollu Mehmet Pasha, Ottoman grand vizier,<br />
162–3<br />
Solzhenitsyn, Alexander, 285<br />
Sorqaqtani, wife of Toluy and mother of<br />
Great Khans Möngke and Qubilay, 109,<br />
117–18<br />
Soviet Central Asia, x<br />
Index 367<br />
Soviet Union: formation, 223; constitution,<br />
226; structure, 227; Union republics, 227<br />
soyurghal, 127, 147<br />
Stalin, Joseph, 211, 213–15, 281<br />
Stein, Sir Aurel, a British archaeologist, 268<br />
sufi, sufism, 37<br />
Sükhbaatar, 21 (city), 298 (founder of modern<br />
Mongolia)<br />
sultan, 196<br />
“summit” of Turkic states, 291<br />
Suyab, capital of the Western Kök Turkic<br />
empire, 24<br />
Syr Darya, 9, 13, 14, 15, 27; known as<br />
Iaxartes in classical sources and Sayhun<br />
in Arabic ones<br />
Syriac language and script, 49<br />
taiga, 1<br />
Tajik, 31–2<br />
Tajikistan, viii–xi, 306–8, 334–5<br />
Taklamakan,a desert in southern Sinkiang 15<br />
Talas, Taraz (city), 25, 68–9, (river), 23, 52<br />
Taliban, 282<br />
Tang, Chinese dynasty ruling at the time of<br />
the Arab conquest of Central Asia, 46<br />
Tannu Ola, mountains in southern Siberia,<br />
21<br />
Tarbagatai, mountains between Sinkiang and<br />
Kazakhstan, 22<br />
Tarim, river and basin in southern Sinkiang,<br />
15–16<br />
tariqa, lit.“path,” Islamic name for a dervish<br />
order, 37<br />
Tarmashirin, Ala al-Din, Chaghatay khan,<br />
119–20<br />
tasawwuf, Islamic mysticism, 37<br />
Tashkent, viii, x, 14, 15, 198, 202<br />
Tatars, 19–20, 196–7<br />
Tatarstan, viii, xi, 28<br />
Tauke, Kazakh khan, 172<br />
Tayy, Arab tribe 32<br />
Tejen, a river and oasis complex in southern<br />
Turkmenistan, 10<br />
Temujin, original name of Genghis Khan, 19<br />
tengri, Turko-Mongol name for the principal<br />
celestial deity, 3<br />
Thomsen, Vilhelm, a Danish scholar,<br />
deciphered the Orkhon inscriptions, 53<br />
Tianshan, mountains in Sinkiang and<br />
Kyrgyzstan, 2, 17–18, 24–5<br />
Tibet, 171<br />
Timur (Tamerlane), 4, 123–5<br />
Timurids, 126–37, 324–5<br />
Tirmidh, a city and intersection on the Amu<br />
Darya, 12
368 Index<br />
Togan, Zeki Velidi, Bashkir scholar and<br />
champion of Turkestanian Muslims, 219<br />
Tokharians, people and their language, 11, 48,<br />
79<br />
Tokharistan, early Islamic name for ancient<br />
Bactria, 11–12<br />
Tolstoy, Alexey, Russian writer, 240<br />
Tonuquq, Kök Turkic minister remembered<br />
for his funerary stele, 54<br />
Toqay-Timurids see Janids<br />
Torghut, Kalmyks who founded a short-lived<br />
khanate on the lower Volga, 173–5<br />
trade, 9, 15–16, 80, 181, 203<br />
Transoxania, 4–5, 46, 47<br />
Tsevang Rabdan, 171<br />
Tughluq Timur, Chaghatayid khan who made<br />
conversion to Islam definitive, 121<br />
Tula, a river in Mongolia, 19<br />
Tunhuang, town on the Silk Road and a<br />
famous archaeological site, 52<br />
Tura, 21<br />
Turajonzoda, Ali Akbar, a Tajik cleric and<br />
public figure, 307–8<br />
Turan, as a symbolic concept, 6<br />
Turfan, 16–17, 52, 165; see also Qocho<br />
Turkestan, Turkistan: changing or multiple<br />
concept of, x, 14, 26; Governorate-<br />
General Turkestan, 201; Turkestan<br />
Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic,<br />
218<br />
Turkic languages and peoples, concept of, xi,<br />
29–31, 33–4<br />
Turkmen people, tribes, 182<br />
Turkmenbashy, new name of Saparmurat<br />
Niyazov, president of Turkmenistan,<br />
281–2<br />
Turkmenistan, viii–xi, 335–6<br />
Turksib, railroad linking the Central Asian<br />
network with the Transsiberian, 22<br />
Turksovnarkom, 212<br />
Tuva Autonomous Republic, viii, xi, 21<br />
Ubaydallah, Shaybanid khan of Bukhara,<br />
154–5<br />
Ufa, capital of Bashkiria, xiii, xi<br />
Uighur people and language, 24; qaghanate in<br />
Mongolia, 21, 66–7, 77; kingdom of<br />
Qocho, 77–81; as a new concept, 270<br />
Uighur Sinkiang Autonomous Region see<br />
Sinkiang<br />
Uighuristan, 24, 165<br />
Ulaanbaatar or Ulan-Bator, capital of<br />
Mongolia, viii, xi, 19<br />
Ulan-Ude, capital of Buriatia, viii, xi, 21<br />
Ulema Jemiyeti, 210, 214<br />
Umar Khan, khan of Khoqand, 191–2<br />
Umar Shaykh, Timurid ruler of Fergana,<br />
father of Babur, 147<br />
Umari, Arab geographer, 115<br />
Umayyads, the first dynasty of caliphs, 47, 62<br />
Ungern-Sternberg, baron, acts as a Mongol<br />
leader and patriot, 298<br />
“Union republics,” 226–7<br />
Ural, river and mountains, 2<br />
urban growth, 231<br />
Urga, 19, previous name of Ulaanbaatar<br />
Urgench, the principal pre-Islamic and early<br />
Islamic city of Khwarazm, 6–7<br />
Urumchi, capital of Sinkiang, 17, 263<br />
Uzbek or Özbeg, Khan of the Golden Horde,<br />
114<br />
Uzbek Soviet Encyclopaedia, 228<br />
Uzbekistan, viii–xi, 14, 225–8, 336–7; 1937<br />
constitution, 228<br />
Uzbeks, people and language, 33, 145<br />
Uzboy, an extinct branch of the Amu Darya, 7<br />
Uzgend, a town in western Kyrgyzstan, one of<br />
the four centers of the Qarakhanids, 85<br />
Vakhan, a river and valley in the “Afghan<br />
Finger,” joins the Panj, 13<br />
Vakhsh, a river in Tajikistan, with the Panj<br />
forms the Amu Darya, 12<br />
Vernyi, name of Almaty in Tsarist times, 23<br />
virgin-land campaign, 236<br />
Volga, river, 28<br />
wali, Muslim saint, 38<br />
waqf, Muslim pious endowment, 231<br />
waste, toxic, dumping of, 236<br />
water, as a resource, abuse of, 293<br />
Western Turkestan, x<br />
White Horde, 323<br />
wildlife, wiped out by environmental blight, 8<br />
work force, 294–5<br />
Yadigarids (Yadigarid Shaybanids) or<br />
Arabshahids, , 181, 327–8<br />
Yakutia, viii, xi; Yakutsk, capital of Yakutia,<br />
viii, xi<br />
Yalavach, Mahmud, and Yalavachids, a family<br />
of civil servants in the Mongol empire,<br />
113–14, 328–9<br />
Yangikant, 27<br />
Yaqub Beg, head of a short-lived Muslim state<br />
in Sinkiang, 265–7<br />
Yaqut, Arab geographer, laments the<br />
destruction of Merv, 114–15<br />
Yarkand, a city in southern Sinkiang, capital of<br />
Yaqub Beg’s state, 16, 165, 263
Yar-khoto, former city and archaeological site<br />
near Turfan, 17, 77<br />
yasa, 113<br />
Yasavi, Khwaja Ahmad, a Turkic sufi and<br />
founder of the Yasaviya order of<br />
dervishes, 26<br />
Yasavi zikr, 248<br />
Yasaviya order of dervishes, 26, 37, 141–3<br />
Yasi, also known as Turkistan, a town in<br />
southern Kazakkhstan, 25–7; Ahmad<br />
Yasavi’s mausoleum at, 248<br />
Young Bukharans, 206<br />
Yüan, dynastic name of the Genghisids ruling<br />
China, 111, 320–1<br />
Yunus Khan, a Chaghatayid khan of<br />
Moghulistan, 141<br />
yurt, the tent of nomadic Turks and Mongols,<br />
42–3<br />
Index 369<br />
Yusuf of Balasaghun, author of the Qutadghu<br />
Bilig, 92<br />
Zarafshan, a river in north-western Tajikistan<br />
and central Uzbekistan, 4–5, 25<br />
Zhengish Chokusu, 15; highest mountain in<br />
the Tianshan range on the<br />
Kyrgyz–Sinkiang border<br />
Zhezkazgan, a town in central Kazakhstan,<br />
28<br />
Zhirinovskiy, Vladimir, a Russian nationalist,<br />
285<br />
zikr, a litany performed by sufi dervishes, 37<br />
Ziyad ibn Salih, Arab commander in the<br />
historic victory over the Chinese, 69<br />
ziyarat, devotinal visit to an Islamic shrine or<br />
sacred site, 37, 39<br />
Zoroastrianism, 23, 48–9